Broken Yolk
by attica
Summary: COMPLETE! "You know that love really isn't what they say it is, right? In the books? In the fairytales? Nobody comes and rescues you from your tower. Nobody fights off a big bad witch or even slays a dragon." A story in which everyone wants someone other than the one they're with. Post-Hogwarts, ultimately D/Hr.
1. Part 1

**Broken Yolk**

**Summary: **"You know that love really isn't what they say it is, right? In the books? In the fairytales? Nobody comes and rescues you from your tower. Nobody fights off a big bad witch or even slays a dragon." A story in which everyone wants someone other than the one they're with. G/D/Hr/H.

**A/N:** For the lovely sandiwandi. She asked for a G/D/Hr love triangle but I got a wee bit carried away and threw Harry in for the mix! No surprises, though: this WILL end up D/Hr. Posting up 2 chapters today!

* * *

**PART 1.**

That day she'd had a tuna melt for lunch. Even afterwards, the throbbing cut on her finger had served as a cruel reminder of it. The story went like this: she had forgotten to cut the bread before she'd shoved it in the toaster oven to toast, and afterwards the bread had been too tough. That was how she'd come to slice good one on her finger. And as she sucked on it, flipping open the cabinet doors in an attempt to find a first aid kit or at least some damn band-aids, that was when she'd found the note on the table.

_Hermione,_

_Went out for a walk. Don't worry, I'll be back soon._

_Harry._

To be fair to him, he hadn't taken one of this "walks" in, well, a while. In a few weeks, actually. It was pathetic to count but she did it anyway. Up until today, she had been all too relieved to tally up the growing number of "walk"-less days he'd had. She had built a little scoreboard up on her head out of the habit—all completely psychological. Every time a day went by without Harry disappearing and leaving only a minimal note as proof of his existence, she had been all too happy to tally it up in her mental scoreboard, but at the same time, that relief and happiness had always been coupled with worry and doubt. She was a practical woman. Happy mental scoreboard or not, she knew what was going on. It was too clear of a fact, glaring her right in the face, too brutal _not_ to notice.

That morning, after finding a pack of band-aids in the drawer she kept the matches and incense, she erased the numbers on her scoreboard and hesitantly started over. Zero. A big fat goose egg.

She kept all of this in mind as she ate her lunch. It tasted a lot bitter than usual, and the lettuce had become soggy, but she had the newspaper laid out in front of her, reading up on the latest headlines. This was what she did every day to keep herself from sinking into some miserable hole. The world was in such a sad state. It was easier to feel a detached sort of hurt for something else than to confront the personal turmoil going on inside her.

"I don't get it," she heard the woman from across from her say. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her hair was a frizzy mess. Across from her, there was another woman with thoughtful and remorseful eyes consoling her. A friend, probably. "I don't get it. What makes a man do that? I love him with every bit of my being and-and what does he do? He goes out and fucks his coworker! Sally _fucking_ Benning!"

"He's scum," her friend – a redhead with an overbite – says, shaking her head. The sad woman blew into a napkin. "Absolute fucking _scum_."

Hermione, meanwhile, found herself attentively watching them, her newspaper absolutely forgotten. She tried to figure out if this was really happening or whether she had stepped into some sort of sick hallucination, maybe a peek into the future.

The redhead noticed Hermione's gawking and glared at her. Hermione stiffened and quickly went back to her paper, but having found that she'd lost her appetite for her bitter tuna melt. Instead she kept thinking of goose eggs. She listened on to their conversation but pretended to read her paper.

"What am I going to do?" the woman asked.

"You're going to be strong," her friend told her, patting her hand. "You're not going to let him see you phased, okay? You're going to kick him out and you're going to sleep around until you're okay."

She compared their situations. It had startling similarities—except for a few things. For one, Harry was definitely not messing around. He was just hopelessly in love with someone else. As far as she knew, there was no sex involved whatsoever. Just emotions.

But that was just it, wasn't it? Which was worse, exactly: having someone fuck, say, Sally Benning who might be attractive and thin just for the sake of fucking, or having someone absolutely and completely in love with someone else that they sunk into temporary lapses of depression? Which was worse: having absolutely no self-control sexually or having absolutely no self-control in loving someone else? This was a question she had been mulling over ever since all of this had started.

The sad fact was that she knew exactly which was worse. The sad fact was that she could have easily walked over to the crying woman with the cheating boyfriend and have patted her back while telling her that things could be worse, he could be _madly in love_ with this Sally fucking Benning. "And," she could have also said, "you could be me. Silent and helpless and absolutely not Sally fucking Benning."

* * *

She could pinpoint the moment this had all happened. The trigger for his early morning (and sometimes late evening) walks, the subtle moping he did around their apartment, the way he cringed when he heard her voice on the answering machine whenever she called to make plans. On the very rare occasion they had sex, he would close his eyes. This was an insult all in itself, and she didn't even have to consult any gal pals to know exactly what it meant. _He's fucking you_, she thought afterwards when he went to the bathroom, _but he wants to be fucking _her.

It happened two weeks ago, on a Thursday, at Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's anniversary dinner. It had been a big bash with guests from all over, a happy and nearly bursting Burrow, and though it was entirely too small of a place to congregate that many people inside of it, nobody seemed to mind. It was a cheerful gathering celebrating love. That's exactly what they said. "It's a cheerful gathering celebrating love. And—whatever you do, don't drink the punch; Fred and George are trying out their most recent invention."

Everybody had brought someone. Ron had brought Luna, the twins had each brought their own gorgeous blondes (both from Sweden and knew only a speck of English), she had Harry, Percy had his wife, Charlie had Fleur, and Ginny had brought Draco Malfoy. She remembered the exact moment she'd seen them enter the overcrowded room, with her skinny little arm latched through his. He stood too primly straight, regarding the room with a sort of muted scowl on his face. And Ginny had looked flushed and pink and happy. Maybe a little _too_ happy. That should have told her something about that night. The way Ginny was bright and glowing and could never stop smiling. She was like a light bulb with legs. She never let go of his arm, either. Everywhere she went, he went. Like a ball and chain. Or a balloon wrapped around a little kid's wrist.

When Ginny had finally gotten around to them after exchanging social niceties with everyone else, Hermione kept her gaze ahead of her. She knew that looking at Harry's face would have been unbearable, in a way, just because the moment she had found out about his little secret it was hard to _not_ read him. She read him too well now and that was the problem. It was a _problem_. A big one. It was like finding out your purpose in life but to a much smaller spectrum. Once she had found out, she knew the answer to everything, even when she didn't want to.

It was ironic to her because every time she went to a Muggle bookstore, she passed the Relationships section (it was on the way to the Philosophy section). Usually they had a few display books up. Ones titled _What is He Thinking?_ And _How to Read Your Man_. She realized later on that while some men were closed books and were, thus, the object of many women's frustrations, the case she had on her hands was entirely different. The opposite, actually. Finding out about her boyfriend's wanton feelings for someone else just paved the way for the big bad truck of hurt.

She wondered if someone else out there had written a book for the cure. _How to Go Back to Not Being Able to Read Your Man_, or _How to Live Securely in Denial_, or something else cleverly titled yet very blatant. She also couldn't help the thought of those poor women lurking around that section, not wanting to be seen in it, but also itching to get their hands on those books.

"Hermione! Harry!" she crowed. That was Ginny. She crowed. "How are you two?"

Both she and Harry had mixed responses. She said they were doing good, and Harry opted for the word "great."

"How about you?" Hermione asked. She glanced at Draco Malfoy, who was looking at her with a strange expression. She couldn't blame him. He hadn't gotten used to the Burrow (not that he would; she knew him better than that) and was probably a little over stimulated by all of the. . . people. Not to mention the fact that he probably abhorred all of this. It just wasn't his scene. She could tell him exactly what scene he belonged in – the kind with crystal chandeliers and seven course meals with diamonds encrusted in the silverware – and that it was a far, _far_ cry from the scene he was in now.

"How are you doing?" she asked, transferring her glance to Ginny.

"Oh! Just fantastic!" she giggled. "You'll see!" she whispered.

Hermione looked at Draco Malfoy, whose slight frown had disappeared from his stoic face. She wanted to tell him he looked like a fish out of water. A rich boy out of his castle. A Slytherin out of the dungeons. But the fact was that she hadn't talked to him since Hogwarts had let out, not even when Ginny had surprised them all one day by announcing that she was now the girlfriend of Draco Malfoy, most hated Slytherin – _human being_ was more the operative word behind her back – of all time. She feigned slight happiness, but really couldn't feel any more than the pretense, because in reality, nothing had changed. Time turned weak little seeds into large, strong trees, sure, but time was another thing for people than it was for nature. People had willpower. They could _withstand_ change. Maybe not _around_ them, but inside them they could. You could teach a boy to hate but you couldn't _un_teach it to a hateful man.

She wasn't the only one who felt this way. Harry and Ron had seven grueling months of trying to practice looking at him without contempt and hate. It wasn't easy. But with Ginny's pleading and with the whole seeing her so happy with him jig, Ron was easier to sway with her lightbulb-ness than Harry was. Harry was. . . in short: in pain. He hated Malfoy for all the wrong and right reasons. The right reasons were that Malfoy was a bona fide asshole, he was racist, and he was just a very hateable human being. The wrong reasons were that he hated him because he was with the woman he loved. He had finally gotten what Harry Potter couldn't, and he hated him more than enough just for that.

It shouldn't have been a surprise to her—because in a way, she had seen it coming. Or, at least, she _should_ have seen it coming. There had been something clearly wrong with the picture the moment Ginny and Malfoy had entered the scene, and later on, after everything had happened, she wondered why she couldn't have at least _smelled_ it: the smell of catastrophe wrecking havoc on her life; the odor of fire and burning and rubble and ruins. If the realization had been too vague, too large and monumental for her to possibly comprehend, she should have at least _felt_ it. In her heart. Her heart should have been heavy with it, this yet _unrealized_ realization, waiting to burst out in horrific fireworks and quakes.

When Ginny had gigglingly whispered "You'll see!" to Hermione, she had meant it. Hermione _did_ see. And hear, actually. And so did the fifty-some guests that night. Ginny had stood up with her bright and lovely face and her voice had been so crystal clear that everyone heard it within a good fifty foot radius without missing a beat. That was when, in front of everybody she knew and loved, she made the announcement.

"Draco and I," she said, before taking a large gulp of air, "are getting married!"

And that was when she revealed the diamond ring she had been hiding all this time, tucking it in when she had wrung her arm around his for the entirety of the party.

To be fair, she wasn't the only one who knew how to take this very recent bit of shocking news. Ron had gone so white he was almost purple, and Percy seemed to be the only one who clapped afterwards, along with a flabbergasted Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. The twins were too busy translating the news to their Swedes, and Charlie was trying to get Ron to breathe again. Fleur was dazzled by the mass reflections of light Ginny's new ring gave off. Hermione had been too afraid to look at Harry but did so anyway – maybe out of morbid curiosity or just to prepare herself for what was to possibly come afterwards – and saw everything she would never want to see. She should have braced herself, she figured. The look of utter devastation on his face, then how it flickered to hurt, then complete agony was definitely something she should have readied herself for. Later on, however, she realized that she could've prepped herself for it. . . but it would've proved useless. No matter what you did, no matter what thoughts you thought or what deity you prayed for mercy from, nothing could prepare you from looking at the face of the person you loved after hearing that the person _they_ loved was getting married. It was a sick, twisted thing.

During the scattered applause after the confusion had died out, people running up to Ginny to congratulate her while Malfoy stood in the back, in a cool and unfazed way, Harry turned around and brushed right past her, weaving through the crowd. He was headed for the exit. "I'm going for a walk," he'd lowly muttered.

"What's Swedish for getting married?" Fred asked her, while his blond date blinked in bewilderment at all of the fuss around them.

"And what's Swedish for sister?" asked George.

"Honestly, you two," Charlie said, "what Swedish do you actually _know_?"

A few minutes later, after having to make her way through the crowd (which was buzzing with the news), she found herself in the Burrow's backyard. She couldn't help but let out a large exhale of air once the cool night air hit her skin, wanting to hold onto something, to _grip_ something with her own two hands. Something stable, something tangible, and mostly – to hold her up if her knees gave away. She wasn't being dramatic. It was just that. . . it was just going to be this much harder to pretend she didn't know what she did, and that it didn't hurt her the least bit.

So she dug into her purse and came up with a pack of cigarettes. She lit one up and felt no guilt about it. Hell, at this point, she needed it. After inhaling and exhaling, she stared at the glowing, orange butt. She flicked it with her fingers, tapping it against the wooden rails, and watched the tiny embers as they flew out into the night, glowing before fizzing out, invisible, dead.

Nobody knew about her habit. Not even Harry had a single damn clue. Usually she only smoked when he went out for one of his long contemplative walks, so she was safe. He had his secret; she had hers. Seemed like a fair trade, right?

Not really.

She thought about Ginny getting married. The basic idea – without any of the sordid specifics, like the groom or the dress or the details or the holy matrimony. Then she filled in the blanks. Malfoy. She was getting married to Malfoy. It didn't add up. It just didn't. She wondered if it even added up to Ginny. Maybe it didn't, but she was too drunk with the nectar of love or whatever the hell it was they called it, and she was doing this under impaired judgment. And. . . _Malfoy_? _Seriously_? Marrying into the Weasley family? Had fate or God or whoever it was in charge of the free fucking world taken a vacation and left them in the hands of a crazy, irresponsible babysitter?

"Potter went that way."

She turned around, startled and nearly tucking her cigarette behind her back as a reflex, but as she squinted in the darkness and saw exactly who it was disrupting her thoughts, she relaxed. Or – _relaxed_ wasn't the word, exactly, but she sure as hell didn't care about hiding her only visible vice in front of him.

She took another big puff. She thought about ignoring him. She thought about sticking her hot cigarette butt right on the sensitive skin of his neck. She also thought about asking him just what the hell he thought he was doing, marrying her best friend's sister – and, most especially, being _here_, like this.

"Congratulations," she said stiffly, not really meaning it. She couldn't think of anything else to say, besides "I wish you'd burn in Hell, right where you're standing."

"Thanks." He seemed like he didn't really mean this, either. He stood beside her with his hands in his pockets.

"You've come a long way."

She thought she heard a smirk in his voice. "Not really."

What she did then couldn't have ever rested as something bad on her conscience. She threw her cigarette down on his shoe, furiously hoping that it would burn through the leather before he had a chance to kick it away. That was the thing with men like Draco Malfoy. They never changed but always seemed to attract people who held a hope very close to their heart that they did. She called it having a little too much faith in mankind that it turned into a dangerous and mad delusion. Ginny had it. The first time Ginny had announced it and Malfoy hadn't been around, she kept saying he'd changed, like a Buddhist mantra. _Oh, but he's changed. He's changed so much. He's so different now_.

When she'd come back inside, the sticky heat of the Burrow plastering itself back onto her skin, a lanky arm shot out of the crowd and dragged her to a corner. It was there that an angry red face was waiting for her.

"_Married_?" Ron yelled at her, though his voice was lost amongst the noisy cacophony of the party. "Married? _Ginny's getting married_? To _Malfoy_?"

"I know," she told him. "I was there, too."

"But this wasn't supposed to happen! She wasn't supposed to end up _marrying him_! She was supposed to _date_ him for however long, you know, to live out whatever sick fantasy she has—and then it was supposed to be _over_! She wasn't supposed to _marry him_!" He dug his face into his hands. "This can't be happening. We have seriously been _fucked_ with. I _know_ it."

* * *

It played on a sort of painful irony when she got home and there was a message waiting for her in her answering machine. It was Ginny, asking if they could talk. Hermione considered saying No, that they couldn't talk – _shouldn't_ talk, for the sake of what it would do to her mental health and, well, her heart. But Ginny was persistent. And after she hadn't called her back in two days, she sprung for a surprise visit. Good thing Harry had gone out for another one of his walks.

"What's the matter with you? You haven't called me back." Ginny didn't bother to take off her coat and just walked in with a bottle of champagne in her hand. "Is something the matter, Hermione?"

She fed her the "Oh, I've just been busy" excuse, adding on an extra arm of "problems at work, a lot of relocating and employee-employer conflict" and Ginny, who had never been one for office drama anyway, just nodded and accepted it. That was what Hermione could count on her for. Accepting very untrue things. As a matter of fact, things at work were going swimmingly. With exception of the crying woman with the cheating boyfriend, she had recently been put up for a promotion and a pay raise. Not that anyone really knew about her recent success. She'd had half a heart to mention it to Harry lately, and when she had finally brought it up – in a futile effort just to boost his spirits, however pathetic and lame the result would be – he'd seemed to just give her a thumbs-up and a weak hearted "Good job."

"Anyway," she said, brushing her silky strawberry hair behind her shoulder, "I have something really important to talk to you about. That's why I've been calling."

Turned out, she wanted Hermione to plan her wedding – or, at least, _help out_ with planning the wedding. Because Ginny's interior designing firm had just landed a huge account and needed her working almost 24-7, which meant her not being able to handle most of the wedding things personally.

"That's _why_, Hermione," she said, "I choose _you_. I _trust_ you. You're organized, and you're smart, and very strong willed. Of course, I'll be paying you. It's just – I know what you're thinking, but I want to get married _this_ year, and yeah, I could just pass on the account to someone else. . . but I just _can't_, you know? These are just two things that I want to happen, really badly." Then she smiled. A real beatific smile. "I guess when it rains, it pours, right?"

She talked on about the details, the semantics, and whatever tasks she would have to do, but all she could think about was _why_? Why _her_? Obviously Ginny had already provided the answer to her pulsating question, but she could think of plenty of other of Ginny's friends that would happily do it for her.

She thought about what it would do to Harry. But once she thought that, she wished she hadn't thought it at all.

"So how about it?" She asked this in a large exhale of air. Obviously Ginny had come expecting a Yes, seeing as how she'd brought a bottle of some very expensive champagne. And to think of it, Hermione really didn't have any reason to say No – besides, of course, Harry's agony about Ginny's upcoming nuptials. But as she thought about it some more. . . it couldn't hurt, spending time away from here. Away from Harry's silent yet very blatant sulking. Away from the secret that always ate away at the disintegrating shell of her throat. Why not? It would be a good distraction. She would hate it, but maybe it was what she needed.

It would hurt, she thought to herself, but it couldn't hurt as much as it did being here.

"Sure," Hermione sighed, forcing a smile. "Why the hell not? I'll help you plan your wedding, Ginny."

Ginny, squealing with joy, popped open the champagne, and as it shot out of the bottle, fizzing, Harry walked through the door. He looked into the kitchen – at the woman he was supposed to love and the woman he actually did love. Hermione gulped down a stone that wasn't supposed to be there. She weakly smiled at him, but his eyes were on Ginny, who was giggling, her hair soaked with alcohol.

"Harry!" she said. "You've got a good woman, you know that? She just agreed to plan my wedding. Never let her go, do you hear me? _Never_."

* * *

So the wedding was being planned. In bits and pieces, and certainly very slowly, but being planned, it was. And Hermione was right – it _was_ a distraction. But she couldn't deny that there were times that it hurt. Like the time Ginny had asked her to come along to the wedding dress fitting and, under wedding planner obligation and also under the obligation as one of her _woman friends_, she went along. Sitting there in the waiting room, staring at the platform where Ginny would stand to show off her white dress, with the tall mirrors surrounding it so that she could inspect herself from each and every angle. . . the cushion she was sitting on seemed to grow needles. There were mirrors everywhere. She remembered the saying that bride-to-be's were one of the most beautiful things in the world, next to pregnant women. Something about the glow of life and exhilaration radiating from their skin. Frankly, it sounded a lot like bullshit to her, but it was a common phrase, so her argument was hers and only hers.

Also, she'd had a pregnant coworker once, and another one of their friends had happened to mention that she looked beautiful pregnant. To his face she said "Thanks," but after he had left, she had turned right around and said, "_Beautiful_? I don't fucking _feel_ beautiful. He should try gaining twenty fucking pounds and then try telling me if that feels beautiful."

As she waited, there were several women trying on their own dresses. Poofy ones with monumental trains, ones with lace, ones with rhinestones. They went up to the folding mirrors and looked at themselves. Strange as it was to say, Hermione had never seen women so in love with themselves as when they were wearing wedding dresses. They drooled all over themselves. Ran their hands over the fabric, traced their silhouettes, and stared at their reflections. Sometimes for twenty minutes at a time.

When Ginny came out, people stared. It was silly to say, but it was true. Other wedding dress advisers came by to gawk and compliment her, and Ginny turned in the mirror, beaming, with her reflection beaming right back at her. Hermione shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

"What do you think?" Ginny asked her. Her eyes were glazed over. She could have told her it looked horrible and it wouldn't have mattered.

"It looks great," she said, nodding. "Beautiful. They'll cry their hearts out."

"Do you think Draco will like it?"

"Men," Hermione said, "don't care about wedding dresses. If they did, they would be the ones to pick it out. If churches didn't frown on nude weddings, you could guess where we'd all be by now."

"Don't be silly, Hermione," she told her. "What about you? How do you picture your dream wedding dress?" She twirled.

She blinked. "I don't know," she answered. "It'd be. . . well, for starters, a dress."

"Oh, come on! _Specifics_, Hermione. Don't tell me you haven't thought of them? Mermaid, princess, traditional, halter, sweetheart. . .?"

She wanted to tell Ginny that she didn't have specifics. Maybe she'd had them, once upon a time, during a time when the fruits of youth had been ripe for picking and she still believed that Barbie and Ken were the perfect couple – but for the moment the specifics were lost on her. They were out there. Somewhere. Floating around where the good parts of her relationship had disappeared off to, along with missing socks and pens. _For the moment_, she wanted to tell her, _I am too busy trying not to worry about my relationship to wonder whether I want a sweetheart dress or even the option of a traditional veil_. She didn't want to inflict further pain on herself by entertaining thoughts of her own wedding, which now seemed a million years away.

The present was more of a problem than her future wedding dress.

"I honestly don't have a clue, Gin."

She frowned. "Oh. Well. You'll know, Hermione. You'll know it when the time comes. The perfect dress is out there waiting for you."

And then she told her that was great. That was exactly what she wanted.

* * *

"You're late."

She was. But she hadn't expected anyone to care, most especially him – most especially since they were just going to pick the wedding china, one of those most menial duties of being her wedding planner. She was surprised he even showed up, much less the fact that he had been waiting for her, with a glass of bourbon in his hand. The strange thing about Malfoy was that she always saw him with some alcoholic beverage in his hand and yet was never drunk.

She was honestly a little startled. "I wasn't expecting—"

"What?" he drawled, jingling the ice in his glass. "That I wouldn't care about picking out the china for my own wedding?"

"Well." She thought about it for a second. "Yeah."

"I couldn't just let you pick out everything, could I? For all I know, you could have chosen plates with the words FUCK YOU across them."

She rolled her eyes, even though it had been a very appealing notion. "Because that's what everyone looks at during a wedding. The plates."

Not like they had plates like that in the first place. Right?

He stood up. "You, obviously," he said, stuffily, "have never been to a Malfoy wedding. And," he said, adding on a second thought, as if reading her mind, "_no_, they do _not_, in fact, make plates such as the ones I mentioned."

Hermione had never picked plates before, nor had she been surrounded by so many plates. It reminded her of when she was little and she would wander into the more fragile section of department stores and her mom would tightly grab her by the hand and tell her to be careful. This stayed with her even after her childhood clumsiness faded. This fear to touch delicate things in case they would break, or the fact that she could possibly misconceive them to be less fragile than they actually were.

"What do you think about these?" He was pointing to a set. Classy, but simple. It had a simple leaf border around the edges.

"I think they're plates," she said dryly. Not that she meant to be a pain, but picking plates would have probably taken ten minutes, tops, for her – which included the picking and the ordering. She would have picked the first decent ones she'd found.

"Details, Granger," he said to her. "Don't think that just because it's a minor detail it shouldn't matter. Think about Potter and his scar. Minor detail, yet the ugliness of it still astounds the public within a twenty foot radius."

She ignored him. She should've known he'd show his true colors when they were alone. She wondered if he acted this way around Ginny, bashing all of her friends and her family. Again, this brought up the question of why she was marrying this stupid fuck in the first place.

She took a look around them. They were the only two people here, besides the old lady dozing behind the counter. They were surrounded by glass display cases, lit up to show every detail of the plates behind them.

She took a look at the price tag. "Jesus Christ! Is that just for a regular set?"

He nodded. "It's good, but not great. Let's look at their vintage plates."

As he inspected the plates with a seriousness that she honestly found ridiculous, she seriously pondered asking him exactly why he was doing this. Picking plates. And why it _mattered_. And also, the bigger picture: why he was marrying _Ginny_. As far as she could tell, he didn't treat her any more special than he did anyone else. Every time she saw them together he wasn't any. . . _different_. And wasn't love, more than anything else, supposed to _change_ someone?

"You know," she remembered Luna telling her, after she and Ron had just fought. He'd pleaded for Hermione to head over to Luna's flat to see if she could mediate between the two. "You know that love really isn't what they say it is, right? In the books? In the fairytales? Nobody comes and rescues you from your tower. Nobody fights off a big bad witch or even slays a fucking dragon. The problem is that everyone does what they can to make a show of it, to make love extravagant, like it's a show that everyone has to watch. Why can't love be. . . hidden? A secret? Since when did love have to be shouted from every corner of the room? And if they can't _see_ love, why do they have to doubt it – assume it isn't there?

"It's because people have over heightened expectations. And – it's not their fault, either. It's nobody's fault. It's just that sometimes, it's gets to be a little too much. That's not what love is about. It's not about declarations and making sure everyone knows what's yours."

Luna had been particularly incensed that day, and Hermione hadn't known why, either. She and Ron fought about big things, little things – just _things_, regularly.

"Then what," asked Hermione, "is it about?"

"I don't know. That's the truth, too. I have no fucking clue what love is about, but all I know is that it's not about _that_. And sometimes that's all you need, you know? Nobody has a clear definition of what life is, and yet here we are, living. You just have to know what it _isn't_ about. The rest is okay not being known."

Draco cleared his throat. When he caught her attention, he had one of his eyebrows arched.

"I'm sorry," he said dryly. "Am I boring you?"

She sighed. "They're plates," she snapped. "I'm a good planner, Malfoy, but plates are the least of my problems."

"Yes, from the looks of it, your hair still remains a crime against humanity," he mused. "Take a look at these." He pointed towards a set in the glass. "Vintage. Toughened porcelain, but still smooth."

She looked, albeit begrudgingly. She didn't know what the plate standards were, but she thought they were okay.

"They're _your_ china," she told him, stepping back, a little miffed. "I guess I was just here for supervision." She looked at her watch. It took her an extra thirty minutes, too.

Malfoy headed over to the counter to make the order. She heard indistinct conversation behind her, and she continued to look at his selection. He went through a lot of trouble for plates.

"I don't get it," she said to him, later on. She didn't want to get too comfortable with him – obviously that was her last wish – but she was bewildered by his rapt attention to detail. As in: plates. "What's with the plates, Malfoy?"

They were out of the plate store now, and he'd given her the order receipt. She'd folded it up and placed it in her pocket, in a sorely civilized manner.

"I don't know if you've heard," he said to her in his usual arrogant tone, "but wedding china is fairly important in some cultures."

"Yeah, but what's it to _you_ whether they're vintage or not?"

That was when he looked at her, and she couldn't exactly decipher his expression. His brow was furrowed but there was little else distinct about it. He had his hands in his pockets again.

"I don't expect you to understand."

"Fine." So she won't understand. Not like her life would stop just because she didn't understand why plates were such a big deal to him.

They walked along in silence, passing a few people, all bundled up in warm clothing. It was a damp morning. And as they walked it suddenly occurred to her that this was unnecessary. Walking with him. Their destinations were, probably, in completely different directions.

"My parents had plates," he suddenly said, just as she had made up her mind to leave. "But they were all ruined."

She gave a slight nod. So it was all for sentimentality. And here she'd thought, all this time, that he didn't even know the definition of the word, let alone the word itself. "Oh."

Then it felt weird. Walking along, with his history brought up. The sentimentality had changed the way the air felt, a little. It made it a little denser. And that was the best cue she could take to head separate ways. Before things got any weirder.

A/N: Drop me a line, guys! Tell me what you thought.


	2. Part 2

**Part 2.**

"What in the _hell_ do you think you're doing?"

There was an angry red face in front of her. Again.

"You're _planning_ her wedding? _Planning_? I thought we were all against this! We were going to _boycott_ this, remember?"

Ron still wasn't too happy about his sister's engagement. Harry was in the living room, watching the news, trying to ignore the shouting going on in the kitchen.

"I couldn't say no," she told him.

"Couldn't say no?" he stammered. "If she asked you to eat a live chicken, Hermione – _WOULD YOU HAVE BEEN ABLE TO SAY NO THEN_?"

This got her a little annoyed. If Hermione was anything, it _wasn't_ a pushover. "Look, I'm not too thrilled with it either."

"Then why, oh why, Hermione," he said, groaning, thumping his forehead against the table, "are you _helping_ along Satan's hand in the destruction of my family?"

"Ron, maybe they won't get married after all, you know? Maybe they'll cancel. Maybe," Hermione said, glimpsing towards the living room, "at the last minute, they'll cancel."

"There's no chance," Ron said, shaking his head. "When Ginny's got her mind made up about something, it's already good as done."

"Well then, maybe Malfoy will decide to break off the engagement."

He froze. Then his eyes narrowed at her. "_What are you saying_? Are you saying Ginny's not good enough? Because, I'll have you know – she is _so much better_ than that twittering blond _fuck_! In fact, she has just gone way below her level—"

"No, no. That's not what I meant. At all."

Sighing, she sat down in front of him. He looked at her, pleading and desperate, before burying his head in his hands and groaning.

"This hurts me, too, you know," she whispered.

"Oh yeah?" Ron said. "How?"

For a very brief second she thought about telling him. _Ron, Harry is madly in love with your sister_. And then he would say, _But what? I thought he was in love with _you! And then she would pathetically answer. . . _No. No, he's not_. He'd ask how she knew. That's what he would do next. And then she would start listing all of the evidence on her fingers, trying not to cringe the whole time.

That's what would happen if she told him.

"I don't know," she said instead. "But it just does."

Then they lapsed into silence. One of those silences where she knew for a fact that both of their heads were getting overrun with thoughts – some relevant, some not. They both fell into each of their own fears and worries, trying to mentally untangle things. What Hermione wanted to tell him was that, sometimes, things weren't as simply as untangling things. Sometimes the chords and ties were wrapped around together. Sometimes it was a matter of cutting one tie – sacrificing one tie – to get the rest free. And it was just a matter of choosing the right one, choosing the right wire, to snip. It was a ticking time bomb. Red or blue, red or blue.

Then he finally spoke.

"You know, life is funny sometimes," he said to her. "Really tests your temper. How much you can take. And then it's funny, because once you decide you're done with life's tests, and a clear form of suicide is on the way, that's when you realize that that's just another test from Life, too. Everything's a test, Hermione. Have you ever thought of that? This," he said, sadly, "is just another test."

"That isn't so funny."

"Yeah. I know. It's just sad." He rested his face in his arms. "But sometimes, you know, just because nobody's laughing doesn't mean that it isn't funny." And then he gave a weak laugh, meant for absolutely no one and nothing.

* * *

Ginny hadn't told her that Malfoy was going to be involved in a lot of the wedding planning until, well, he already was.

"I don't know why you're so surprised," one of her friends, Elena, had told her at work. So far she had been the only one she could confide in with this whole fucked up wedding planner business. "He's the groom, isn't he?" Then she stopped chewing, staring at the speared lettuce on her fork. "Oh wait. That _is_ weird."

And weird it most definitely was. He was involved. Not fanatically involved, but involved nonetheless. Last week, he had surprised her by showing up at the catering place. And he'd also ordered the entire menu, with exception of the few Hermione had managed to get in – Ginny's preferences. For example, herb chicken. Ginny had been fairly adamant about the herb chicken, but Malfoy wasn't too thrilled with it.

"Herb chicken," he frigidly told her, "is dry. It doesn't fit with anything else in the menu."

That was when she pointed out that the reason it didn't fit with anything else in the menu was because he had _chosen_ the entire menu.

"Well, what do _you_ think about him?" Elena asked her. "From what you told me—"

"He's fucking horrible. In a nutshell." Because she really could go on and on about this. "Nobody likes him. Or trusts him, as a matter of fact. We think better of the scum between our toes than we think of him." She shook her head. "_Nobody_ likes him," she repeated.

"Except Ginny."

"_Except_ Ginny. And therein lies the problem."

Elena thoughtfully nibbled at her cherry tomato. "That's tough. Real tough. But, I mean, do you think they're going to last?"

"No," she answered, shaking her head. "Absolutely not."

But the truth was, she actually _didn't know_. If she had to guess, to _really guess_, she would say what she'd just said. No. Of course they wouldn't. Because Malfoy was Malfoy, and no matter how much the Weasleys loved Ginny and how much they had put up with him during their relationship, there was no way they were actually going to let her get married to him. In fact, there should've been an intervention in the works right about now.

"Maybe she really loves him." To be fair, this was an optimistic, Let's-have-faith-in-mankind thought. But it just happened to be _completely_ irrelevant.

That wasn't the point, she then told her. It really wasn't. _Malfoy_ was the reason this entire equation wasn't working. If Ginny had been marrying, say, Seamus Finnigan – things wouldn't be this bad. Sure, Harry would still be head over heels in love with her, but at least he didn't have to lose her to _Malfoy_.

"Oh," Elena said, snorting, "you're fucked, Hermione. Absolutely, completely, undeniably _fucked_. I'm sorry, but it has to be said. You," she said, pointing her baby carrot at her, "need to get yourself out of this hole you've dug yourself into. Listen to me. Are you listening to me? Get. Out. _Now_. Before things get worse."

_Because they will_. She didn't say it, but she didn't have to. The thing with having a series of unfortunate events happen to you is that, sometimes, there is no end in sight. Sometimes things get better. Sometimes things get worse. But usually, things get a lot worse right before they get any better, and in the meantime, you are just absolutely fucked.

* * *

She had walked in right while the maid of honor was making her speech. The maid of honor, a perky brunette, was dressed in frilly peach chiffon and had vivid make up that even Hermione, standing all the way to the back, could distinctly make out.

Then the crying came.

Hermione stood beside a large vase of lilacs, trying not to be noticed. Not that she wasn't supposed to be here – she'd requested to see the hall and they said it was perfectly okay she dropped by at this time just as long as she didn't freeload off of the food – just that she felt a little uncomfortable walking in on somebody's wedding reception. So she tried to hide behind the vase, all the while cringing as the maid of honor's sobs filled the room, amplified.

She had gone to her fair share of weddings. At her job it seemed like somebody was getting married every few months; they were crazy about weddings and showers. And one thing she always seemed to notice about the receptions was that the seating was almost always terrible (once they had sat her by the bride's drunk uncle, who had then kept trying to grab her knee under the table) and that the maid of honor's speech was indistinguishable. Too much crying. Completely undecipherable.

There was polite scattered applause after the maid of honor's speech, who was now giving the slightly embarrassed bride a soggy hug. Hermione couldn't help but smile a little.

Just then, a man in a black suit obstructed her view. She budged a little against the wall, turning her head, nearly tipping the vase over – before she realized just who the man was.

"_Malfoy_?" she whispered.

He turned around, seeking out the voice for a quick second before his cool gray eyes rested on her. "Granger. I _thought_ that was you. But then I didn't think you'd be so ridiculous, hiding behind a vase."

She stepped out, glaring at him. Frankly, she was getting a little tired of him showing up at all of her wedding planner-esque activities. Couldn't she get some peace around here? "Don't you _work_?" she demanded.

"As a matter of fact," he said, regarding her frigidly, "I do. I just happen to be able to choose my hours."

"So get a hobby!"

"Maybe weddings _are_ my hobby."

This was absolutely fucking ridiculous. "Then why'd your _fiancé_ hire me in the first place? Why don't _you_ just plan your own damn wedding?"

He gave her a blank look. Just then, he reached out towards her, and she flinched, stepping back, startled. "Relax," he drawled. "There's a leaf in your hair." He showed it to her. It was a leaf from the lilac vase. "Or maybe I should have just left it there, so you could walk around looking like an idiot all day," he mused. "Really, Granger. It amuses me that you always seem so surprised to see me so involved in my upcoming nuptials."

"Surprised wouldn't be the word," she muttered to herself. "It isn't normal," she spoke up. "Grooms usually don't give a shit about weddings. And seeing how as you clearly don't give a shit about _anything_—"

"Now that's not true," he interjected. "Contrary to popular belief, Granger, I do have a few beloved things in this world."

"Oh?"

"For example, I take _great care _of my hair. Don't tell me you haven't noticed?"

"Jesus Christ, Malfoy." He clearly was not even attempting to take this seriously. "Why are you even getting _married_?"

She thought about Ginny's and Malfoy's different maturity levels. Ginny was twenty-two, while Malfoy was twenty-three. Which approximately meant that Malfoy still, probably, had the maturity of a thirteen-year-old. It was completely mismatched. She told him all of this, too, in an attempt to make him see some sense before he went and sabotaged her friend's life.

"Do me a favor," he told her, "and warn me before you go off on your awfully long spiels that don't ever let me get a word in. I'd like to walk away before you do that again."

She didn't get it. No matter how many times she mulled it over in her head, or tried on Ginny's tiny little shoes and looked at it from her view – she didn't get it. Malfoy from _any_ view was still. . . _Malfoy_. Repulsive. Arrogant. Insufferable. Even with the insults deeply muted between them (and this was all for the sake of Ginny), and the fact that she had opted to ignore his presence altogether instead of give into her childhood grudge, there was still tension. Not that she expected that to ever go away. With the way things were going, if Ginny _were_ to actually go through with marrying the annoying fuck, Hermione had already made peace with the idea of seeing her sparingly.

"If you hate me so much, Granger," he said, lowly, and she stiffened, "then why don't you tell Ginny not to marry me? I'm sure Potter and Weasley weren't too thrilled to hear the news, either. You wouldn't be alone, if that's what you're afraid of."

"She loves you. I don't know _why_, but that fact remains unchanged. Who am I to tell her who she can't marry?" _She should already know_, she thought to herself, seething. _She shouldn't be so quick to forget, like the rest of us_.

He smirked triumphantly. "That she does." He looked around. A couple passed by, giving them strange looks. "Still, it shocks me you haven't even tried."

"Why? Are you just doing this to piss us off, Malfoy? Because if you are," she said, hissing at just the thought, "that's a new low, even for you."

He leaned in, his breath grazing her face. "I," he whispered tauntingly, "am pure of intention, Granger. Maybe you hate it. Maybe you refuse to see it. But I _am_ marrying her."

* * *

That night she couldn't help but think about the unlovable people out there who were being loved – and all of the perfectly lovable people who _weren't_ being loved, and thinking about that, she couldn't help but feel a sense of cruel injustice and frustration. Not only because it hit close to home (in this equation, she would be one of those perfectly lovable people who weren't being loved), but because she was seeing it play out right before her eyes (Malfoy was completely unlovable, yet there he was, choosing his damn vintage plates and planning his wedding). That was when she came upon her choices, like she did, every night, and every time she came home to find a note on her table vouching for a missing Harry.

She could get out of this. She could break things off and that way she wouldn't have to be caught in a dead-end like this – because, after all, it was a dead-end. A few months ago she had a little torch of hope for the day that Harry would wake up and be free from wanton feelings for Ginny and be able to love her, _only_ her – but now, no matter how she tried to revive the embers, that little flame was gone. It was cold and gone and just completely, absolutely dead.

Which brought her back to this: she could end this. She could tell Harry that she wasn't stupid, and that she had eyes, and yes – she fucking _knew_ that he loved Ginny and not, in fact, _her_. In the moments she felt completely selfish and fed up and scorned and angry, she thought about the cruelest way she could expose him. But then, a few minutes later after she'd had a few glasses of wine and a few minutes to compose herself, she realized that that was something she wouldn't be able to do. She didn't hate Harry. That was the worst part. She _loved_ him, and thus couldn't _hate_ him – she could only sit there, pathetically, and think about how much she hated _what he was doing_.

Now you must be thinking, She's Hermione Granger! And Hermione Granger we know didn't take shit from _anyone_! That was. . . partially true. The facts were these: she'd loved Harry for a very long time. First as a friend, and then more than that. Another fact was that they'd been happy together for quite a long time before his sulking and mysterious walks started. She'd considered breaking things off at least three times a week, but then when she looked at the state he was in, she wouldn't have the heart to. The worst of it was that she loved him too much to do that to him.

This was a problem, she realized, with mankind, and humanity in general. The power of unrequited love, no matter how _truly_ unrequited it was. There she was, a naturally fierce no-shit-taker, and here she was, taking shit and forcing a smile. She wished love was like a power switch – a flick for ON and another for OFF. Because then people could stop themselves from loving someone who didn't love them back, and they could also decide to love someone back who had, in turn, decided to love _them_ forever. They would have it in control, and that meant the world would be simpler, easier, and maybe – just maybe – less painful.

That night, upon Harry's return from one of his walks, she realized switch or not – she would pretend – she was turning it off.

That had been her original plan – until Harry had walked in.

"Hermione," he said to her once he'd seen her in the kitchen, with a glass of wine in her hand. He was fresh-faced from his evening walk and had a wild look in his eyes. "Let's get married."

She stared at him. Then she blinked, looking at her glass in front of her. Exactly _how much_ wine had she drunk in the past hour?

"I want," he said, sitting down next to her, "to _marry_ you. Let's get married. Tomorrow."

"Harry," she said, having a hard time believing this sudden turn of events, "_what_? Get _married_? Did you happen to trip and hit your head on some extremely hard surface?"

He shook his head. "I want to marry you, Hermione. Say yes."

"Say yes to—Harry, you didn't even _ask_ me—"

"Fine," he said. Then he got down on one knee. "Hermione Jane Granger, will you—"

That was when she knew she had to stop this, whatever this was, maybe a lapse into hysteria or mere insanity. She stood up and walked to the other side of the table, her arms folded across her chest. She took a deep breath. This truly had to be an odd day when Harry Potter, the man she loved to the point she had been willing to bear his blatant love for someone else, strode in here and asked her to marry him and she would refuse him.

"Harry, get up. Don't do this. You don't want to marry me."

"Yes, yes, I do, Hermione," he said. He sounded desperate. This was what hurt the most. Of course, she'd known quickly after the shock had drained from her system that he wasn't doing this because he'd miraculously realized he _loved_ her – he'd done this because he needed a way, some way, to potentially distract him from what was going on. Which was Ginny's wedding. "_I want to marry you_."

"Harry, think about this. Think about what you're asking. _Marriage_, Harry."

"I _have_ been thinking about it, Hermione. I've been thinking about it for a long time."

"A _long_ time?" she scoffed. "How long were you out for your walk – an hour? Maybe two? Two hours is _not_ a long time, and two hours is certainly not enough time to realize you want to marry someone." She walked back around and gripped his arms, helping him up. He silently complied. She didn't want to look at his face, but she did, anyway.

"So," he told her, point-blank, "you don't want to marry me."

She sighed, feeling a slight and painful pinging in her heart. "No, Harry, not right now. I'm not ready to get married, and neither are you. Think about it."

However, in the meantime, she tried her best _not_ to think about it. It was ironic, finally deciding to turn her Love switch off, and he'd come walking in here, asking her to marry him. She realized this made him seem like a bad person. Not so a _bad_ person, but. . . _confused_. Desperate. All of which he was. But now that he'd done what he did, it threw her completely off guard.

"Ginny and Malfoy are getting married." Surprisingly, he said this was a straight face – no flicker of hurt whatsoever in his face. But she knew him better than what his face managed to give out. His voice was dull and straight and emotionless. "When do you know you're ready for something like that, Hermione? They're just as young as we are. And – we've known each other longer."

She swallowed, trying to moisten up the insides of her throat, which had gone excruciatingly dry. "Maybe," she said, "they're just lucky."

* * *

To be fair to Harry, he hadn't always loved someone he wasn't supposed to. And he hadn't always been so secretive and shady. For a very long time, he had been her best friend, and he'd known things about her that she'd kept hidden for a very long time. Take, for example, the fact that she'd resented Ron long after their own short stint in Relationship land ended. And then he'd found Luna.

With Luna, as he'd described it to her one day as she'd tried to find the pasta recipe she'd written down from her mother she was planning to prepare for Harry's birthday, he felt as if he'd "won the fucking Muggle lottery, except. . . _weirder_. But in a good way. A _good_ weirder."

And she'd seen this, too. When he'd brought Luna to Mrs. Weasley birthday party. She remembered how impressed and even mildly jealous she was of Luna. Ron looked at her the way a blind man would look at the sky after he regained his sight. Cheesy, but she didn't know how else to describe it. She even noticed the way Ron would brush his hands against her shoulder blades and give a subtle squeeze every now and then, or whisper in her ear, or refill her drink without her even having to ask. She couldn't explain the jealousy on a level people would understand, nor did she really want to. She'd just felt it because. . . it was _Luna_, and it wasn't _her_ who had been meant to _better_ him, in a way. Not that she'd still had feelings leftover for him, but it was a lingering bitterness, an ever so slight pinch she felt when she saw them that had more to do with her wounded pride than her former feelings for Ron.

"For some things, it really doesn't matter how hard you try," Harry had said to her when he had come up beside her that night, low enough for only her to hear. He'd seen where she was looking and was smart enough to have an idea of what she was thinking. "A fish can jump out of its pond every single day of its life but it doesn't mean that it'll ever get to fly."

* * *

"I don't understand," Ginny said over the phone, "why you're doing this, Hermione. Why are you backing out? The wedding is halfway planned, and I _need_ you, you _know_ I need you—"

"Malfoy seems like he can plan your wedding just fine."

The voice on the other line went silent. "Oh, God. This isn't about him, is it? What the fuck did he do now?"

"Nothing," Hermione said, even though she begged to differ. "It's just that things have gotten incredibly busy for me, Gin—"

"I'm not letting you do this, Hermione! And I'm certainly not going to let you back out of this because of Draco! I'm scheduling a make-up lunch. Be there. We're going to get this all squared out and things will be _fine_, you'll see."

For one, Ginny was right to assume that _something_ was Malfoy's fault. But the thing was that he wasn't exactly the reason she'd called up Ginny and left her a message, telling her that she quit. He was _partially_ the reason, but sadly, not even Malfoy could get her to quit planning her friend's wedding – or even the mere grotesqueness of it all. It just made her see how much her planning the wedding was making things worse between her and Harry. Not that she would ever tell her that. Though sometimes, she did wonder how Ginny would react if she'd found out Harry's feelings for her. Would she be happy? Would she realize she loved him back, too? Would she cancel the wedding?

Or perhaps this was just a strange way of revenge. Hermione knew that Ginny had pined after Harry for a very long time before he even took a second out of his day to notice her. And then afterwards, his affection waned fast. Maybe Ron was right – maybe life _was_ funny, and it played by its own rules, and didn't give a rat's ass who was laughing or not.

Like now, for example. She'd come walking into the fancy little restaurant Ginny had scheduled their "make-up lunch" at, and the redheaded soon-to-be-bride she expected to meet actually turned out to be a snarky and booze-drinking blond asshole. Of course, beforehand, she'd considered not going at all, but she knew that the repercussions of doing so would be hefty and brutal. The infamous Weasley temper was infamous for a reason.

"You're late. You're always late. Why is that?" Malfoy said to her.

"It's twelve thirty-two. It's two mere fucking minutes, calm down. Besides, I wasn't aware I'd be meeting with _you_," she snapped. "If I'd known—"

"You wouldn't have come at all, I know the story, Granger, it's been told millions of times by those before you. But see, element of surprise. It works every time." He stared at her, scowling. "Sit down, will you? Unless you plan to eat that way."

"I'm not eating. I've lost my appetite."

"Of course you have. Now sit your ass down, Granger."

She did, eventually. But not because he asked her to.

"Now, we're supposed to make up," he said to her, after ordering for the _both_ of them, even though she repeatedly told him that she wasn't going to be eating with him. "In all honesty, Granger, it surprised me to hear that you backed out. I know you hate me, but you always rose to the challenge before. What with trying to prove you're better than me and everything."

"Things are different. And," she added, "we're not eleven anymore."

"The only thing that's different," he said, taking out his flask and refilling his glass, "is that _I'm_ getting married and _you're_ with Potter instead of pining after Weasley. Unless you _are_ still pining after Weasley, then in which case the only difference is that I'm getting married."

"Look, why don't you just make up a story about our little "make up" lunch to Ginny? I don't care if you make me show up in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers and have me throw tea sandwiches at you. I'm leaving."

"Now, wait a minute," he said quickly. "Don't make a fucking scene, will you? Just sit down."

"What could it _possibly_ matter to you what the difference is?" she hissed at him. "Last time I heard, you cared about nothing and nobody else but yourself."

"Now you're lying. I thought we already talked about this, Granger. I happen to care about many other things besides myself. But what good does it do to talk about it? Or _show_ it, as a matter of fact?"

This intrigued her. In her head, she distinctly remembered what Luna had told her. _Why can't love be. . . hidden? A secret? Since when did love have to be shouted from every corner of the room? And if they can't see love, why do they have to doubt it – assume it isn't there? _

She sat back down.

"Like I was saying," he said, smirking a little from the success of his attempt, "isn't this one of those things they always talk about? You can say you don't care anything at all, Granger, but if you don't _act_ that way, people don't believe you. Now why can't it be the contrary?"

"Because people need proof, Malfoy."

"Why? People believe in a God that they can't see, or hear, or touch. In fact, billions of people do. So why is that so hard to apply somewhere else?"

"That's different," she said, shaking her head.

"Tell me how it's different."

She couldn't. And when that fact became clear, his little smirk of victory became a triumphant one.

"Hold on a second," she said, not wanting him to win this one. "It's different because some people are exactly what you think they are, Malfoy, and their entire life has proved as the ultimate testament to that. And after that, any speck of evidence proving the contrary is. . . void."

He leaned back in his chair, just looking at her. She couldn't read the look in his eyes, and deep down in her subconscious, that flustered her a little. Or maybe flustered wasn't the word – _uncomfortable_ was more the word. She realized it was all too weird that he would look at her with something _other_ than contempt or sarcasm – just as it would be if _she_ started looking at him like that, too.

"Has anyone ever told you, Granger, that you believe the worst in people?" he asked her. "I don't think it'd be the most pleasant conversation starter, but it's true. What you need is a little bit more faith in humankind. Not everyone out there set out to hurt you. Keep that in mind."

"You _cannot_," she told him, incredulously, " be lecturing me on having a little bit more faith in humankind. You — who seeks to point out every little flaw in every person you meet."

"Why not? I'm getting married, aren't I? To me, that serves as the biggest possible step in having faith in people. Besides, of course, going to war. But I figure, that's the same thing, in some ways."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, there's a winner and a loser. And on a good day, there'll be a draw, meaning you'll both be winners or losers. Either way, at the end of the day, you're both on the same page. _Together_, in a more conclusive word."

**Please review!**


	3. Part 3

**A/N: **Thanks to all those who left me some feedback! Believe me, it is MUCH appreciated!

**Part 3.**

What she was doing now was considered as swimming/sinking. As in she was still swimming, but was also simultaneously sinking. She felt this every time she went to her coffee maker to make coffee, and every time she looked at herself in the mirror, and also every time she broke out the wine after Harry went on another one of his walks. It was. . . how could she explain it? A heaviness. In her gut. And a very severe discontentment paired with melancholy that she could feel in her joints and in her neck. For a very long time she'd convinced herself that she just needed to get another mattress, but now that she could no longer hide from it, she knew her mattress was just fine and that it was just her. Just her.

It reminded her of her first crush. She was six and was in her first year of actual school and, of course, she was preoccupied with getting her spelling and math down and winning all of the gold stars to put beside her name. Every time she watched her teacher peel off that shiny gold star from the sticker packet and smooth it right in the row she had designated all to herself, she felt a little thrumming glow inside her, and she couldn't help but smile, as big as she possibly could. It was a reflex, she was six, and she was eager for academic validation as much as she was those gold stars. Anyway, that was when she noticed the boy sitting across from her. He seemed to always be looking her way when it came her turn to have her star. She would smile and then he would smile back at her. And it went on this way for a few weeks.

One day, while they were playing, she noticed him by the toy kitchen and pretended to be just as interested in frying a plastic sunny-side up egg in a plastic pan. That was when he looked up at her and smiled, just like he always did, when _she_ smiled. So she smiled, too. And she felt her heart do its little flip-flops, all the way down to her stomach.

"You," he said, smiling, "have _big teeth_." And then he couldn't hold in his laughter anymore. He just exploded. That was, of course, when she ran away crying. Later on their teacher forced him to apologize, but that hadn't done much for her wounded pride. It's a fairly difficult time trying to explain exactly why her swimming/sinking feeling related to her first crush travesty, but in a nutshell, it was this: it was all her. In the end, she realized, that it was all her. The misconception was all entirely _her fault_. Granted, she didn't know any better (she was fucking six, for God's sake) – but incidents like these carried on for the rest of her life. Now she learned to analyze all of the possible causations, but that didn't mean it saved her from still ending up the same way.

Elena noticed it, but not before she noticed that Malfoy actually had a point in his little theory.

"He hit _some_thing," she told her, after Hermione had reiterated the strange parts of their conversation. "I don't know what it is, but he hit _some_thing." Then she went on to address the issues he'd brought up. "It's true, though – when I think about it. You're nice enough, but you're uptight. Did you know that? You're uptight. You hold onto things long after you're supposed to. And not just for sentimentality, either."

She had a reason for this. She'd been thinking about it for a long time, and had come up with a reason, and it was this: it's nice to think that things are familiar. It's even nice to think that they _are_ familiar. Good or bad, familiar is familiar. Maybe that's what she was holding onto. Familiarity, whatever last shards she had left of it – after all, Ginny was getting married, Harry was unrecognizable with misery, and she was bearing the brunt of it all. Things had changed and were changing and she felt pressured to keep up with the pace – it was _killing_ her – and maybe that explained why she was still here, holding onto Harry – or the empty shell of him, anyway. She needed something that told her that things would be changing, but they would still be familiar. And that was where Malfoy came in. At least _he_ was still a bit familiar. Sure, he had random moments of insightfulness that scared her at times, but at least the asshole side of him was still _there_. She just tried not to think about how grateful she was sometimes that he was still an asshole and that she could still legitimately hate him.

Still, it didn't help the fact that after Hermione had turned down Harry's spur-of-the-moment marriage proposal, things only got worse. Harry had now shut himself down. He put up an appearance, of course (for Ron's sake) of normalness (though what that actually was, it was foreign to her now), but when they were home they barely spoke a word to each other. As in, words that _counted_ and actually _meant something_. Now their days consisted of talking about the weather and the news and their jobs. Which meant that their relationship had officially hit rock bottom.

One night she'd tried to strike up a soul-opening conversation.

"Harry," she said quietly, staring up at the dark ceiling. He was lying on his side, turned away from her. "Harry, what's going on with us?"

At first she thought he was asleep. But then he answered. "I don't know."

"I can't sleep," she sighed. "I haven't slept in three months, Harry."

"Well," he told her, groggily, "maybe you shouldn't watch the news before you go to bed."

And that was it. That was all. _Maybe you shouldn't watch the news before you go to bed_. She felt frustration, hot and violent, gurgling up her throat. She wanted to hit him. Wanted to shove him off the bed and scream at him. _Why can't we make things work? Why can't you just stop _loving_ her_? She wanted to tell him her little theory about Love switches and unreciprocated love, and about what Malfoy had said about the similarities between marriage and war. And that was how she discovered that you can really miss someone – even if they're there, right beside you.

She wasn't one for sailing metaphors, but this was the only one she had, anyway: it was like Harry was a wayward boat, drifting farther from the shore. In the beginning she'd had her little rope but now it was getting harder to hold on. The tide was working against her.

So this was her time to give one last tug, even if it meant she would immediately have to let go right after.

"Harry? I know. About you, and. . . Ginny."

She didn't yell this, of course. She kind of whispered it, but loud enough that she knew he would hear. She waited for him to say something back. Waited for him to budge and sit up and want to talk about it. But while she waited, mentally playing out all of the different ways this could end up, nothing came. Nothing. She looked over to see if he was awake. He wasn't.

She got out of bed and went into the living room to watch the news.

* * *

The next day, at a scheduled meeting with Malfoy to talk over the reception, she knew she wasn't looking like anyone's ideal cup of tea. In fact, Malfoy – if anything – only validated what she already knew, by greeting her with the words: "Jesus, Granger, how'd you survive _that_ car crash?"

"Don't start, Malfoy," she said tiredly.

"I wasn't going to," he said briskly, his eyes raking over her horrible disposition and appearance. "You need some drinks, Granger. And I do mean plural."

They moved their meeting from the fancy-schmancy restaurant they regularly met in to a less fancy-schmancy bar, which she appreciated. She was a little weirded out by his subtle kindness (if there was any other word for it, she would've used it) but she was too tired to care. And too miserable. And a little too depressed.

They ordered their drinks, and for a long time, said nothing. She figured he was waiting for her to say something, so she did. She felt a little bit better now that she had the alcohol to balance out the lack of. . . happiness she had in her system.

"So, about the reception," she said, after a long drink, "you two make your entrance, then—"

"You should know this already, but I guess you don't—but we seriously cannot talk about the reception when you look like shit run over like this, Granger. It's disrespectful to my wedding." He was closely looking at her. "Now what was the license plate number and did you get a good look at the guy? Was it a hit and run?"

"I'd rather talk about the reception, Malfoy." And she meant it, too.

"You're delusional, you've obviously hit your head. _Look_ at you, Granger. You haven't slept in weeks, have you?"

"Three months, actually," she answered, relenting.

"Really?" He seemed impressed. "Now how on earth did you manage to cover that up?"

"Good concealer. Really good concealer. Ginny bought it for me, actually."

He made an appreciative expression as they lapsed into silence, and she took another drink. She wondered if it'd be too weird if she told Malfoy about what was happening. Once she got her answer – a vicious "Really fucking weird!" from the back part of her brain – she couldn't help but feel very, sadly, and miserably alone. Was it worth this? Though she never could answer questions like those. Everybody had a different scale, had different interpretations. Either something was worth nothing or it was worth everything – but not _every_thing, just _a little bit_ of everything. That was always what it seemed like to her, confusing as hell.

"Three months is a while," he finally commented. "It is – approximately ninety days."

"Yeah. I need to stop watching the news before going to bed," she repeated dully.

"Sure, if that'll make a difference," he scoffed, "but I don't think it will. It takes a lot to rob someone of sleep, you know. Trauma does it. Or seeing Potter naked. Maybe that's it. Have you been seeing Potter naked lately?"

She answered before she thought about it. "No."

"Oh." Malfoy smirked. "So it's the sex then, isn't it?"

"Look," she snapped, "I'm not discussing this with you, okay? Either we talk about the reception or you sit there quietly or you leave. Got it?"

Notice that the choice of leaving was kept for the end – the end of the question was always left for the least desirable choice (for example, "Do you love me. . . or not?"). This was because she didn't really want to be left alone, in a bar, with lots of booze all around her. And sort of because she _did_ want to talk about it, just not while she was fully conscious. She wondered about whether it would be safe to enclose this sort of private information to him. It probably wouldn't be. So, fine. Maybe she'd tell him just very vaguely. Not one mention about Ginny.

He sat there quietly, drinking his drink, staring ahead. They probably sat there for a very long ten minutes, not saying a word to each other, just drinking and sighing and breathing. She was thinking and sinking/swimming all at the same time. And he was probably just waiting. It probably would've been even more awkward if they hadn't been drinking – but Thank God, they were.

"Marriage and war," she finally ended up saying. "Tell me more about that."

He looked at her for a little bit, as if trying to read her, but complied. He spoke slowly, as if working out his words as he said them. "Well, you both have something to lose, and you both have something you're. . . fighting for. And war is passionate. Have you ever realized that? War is as passionate as love. But towards the end, either you're struggling to keep fighting or that's where you find your groove, the easiness where your body just seems to go on automatic, where you start _gliding_. The downward slope.

"See, in war – and marriage – it doesn't matter how things start out in the beginning, just how they end." He looked at her. "But most of the time, in something like marriage, you're not fighting for the end. In fact, you're fighting against it."

She'd only heard the analogies of fighting in a war _together_ – on the _same team_. But she had a feeling he wasn't talking about this same analogy. So she asked him.

"You're fighting," he clarified, "against each other in the way that you're always trying to get their best. Always challenging them. If you think about it, opposite sides of the same war are always still the same. It's just like battling a mirror. You both care enough to fight – and to die – for it. The only difference is if one gives up. That's when they realize it isn't worth it. They can't win."

In his explanation, he had pushed their two empty glasses against each other. Opponents, yet completely identical. Mirrored.

She realized, all of a sudden, that she couldn't win. Of course, she'd known this the entire time – but she kept fighting, kept holding her post. She had been fighting against the end herself, fighting to _keep_ it from ending, even though the outcome had already been set in stone from the beginning. Right from the moment Ginny had walked in with Malfoy with that ring on her hand.

And she knew exactly why, too. Why she had been keeping her post for so unnecessarily long. It's because people have this determined belief that things will always work themselves out in the end. That if you tough out the rough shit, the pieces will always fall where you want them to; it was just a matter of patience. As if all life is doing is testing how bad you _really_ want it. You endure the brutal winter for a bountiful spring, right? But see where that line of thinking had gotten her? Sometimes patience has nothing to do with it. And sometimes, no matter how much you tough it out – you're not _supposed_ to, and the pieces will absolutely _not_ fall where you fucking want them to.

"I've been fighting in a war that's been finished a long time ago. What does that make me?"

"Severely clingy," he answered, though it sounded more like a suggestion. "Or one of those silly war re-enactors." He asked for another glass and refilled it, leaving their two glasses standing together, in between them, like an art display. "Now what war are you talking about?"

"Does it even matter? A war's a war."

"Of course it matters. You could fuck all and it would matter. You could be fighting for religion or land or freedom or just for the sake of fighting. You could be fighting because you're bored and your ass got numb from sitting in your seat. What kind of war – it _matters_, Granger. Because people are always going to look at you and wonder if it was worth it." He took a slight pause. The jukebox in the corner changed records and began to play an old love song. Hermione remembered this song. Her parents danced to it all the time when they thought she was asleep. "Is it worth it?"

There it was. A question she could not answer. How could she possibly determine whether it was worth it? What would she add (maybe their _good_ months or the times he said that he loved her and meant it), and what would she subtract (the bad months, or maybe the total number of walks he's taken)? It was too much work, and she was just too tired. Or maybe it _wasn't_ an equation. Maybe it was just a conclusion, a thought, a simple statement. A summation. That's what it was. Just a summation.

"I don't know," she honestly admitted.

"Yes you do," he pressed on. "You _do_. _Everybody_ does. It's the last thing they think about before they go to bed, and it's the first thing they think of when they wake up. They even think about it while they're having sex. I, in fact, _know_ you know, Granger."

She asked him how he could possibly know that.

"Because look at the state of you," he said, motioning towards her. "You look like utter shit. You look exactly like a person that knows. Maybe you're just repressing it. It's likely you're in denial."

"I'm not in denial," she snapped. She was closer to accepting things, as they were in their shitty state, than she was to being in denial. "I'm _not_."

"Well, then. Out with it. Tell me."

"What do _you_ care?" She knew that sometimes people only wanted to know your business so that they could compare it to their own and feel good about the grotesque comparison. They said to find the lighter side of a situation, you should compare yourself to someone who is homeless, hungry, and very poor with very possibly no family and friends. That's for the extreme cases of people standing on the ledge of a sixty-story building after the phrases "I love you! I need you! Don't die!" don't work.

"I wouldn't, normally. But you're our wedding planner and things won't go right at all if you're getting run over cars all the time."

"For the last fucking time, I _didn't_ get run over by a car, okay?" She sighed. She felt tears prick her eyes, but she was stubborn – she wasn't going to cry. Not in a _bar_. Not in front of _Malfoy_. Crying meant she was vulnerable. Crying meant that she was openly defeated and feeling wretched about it – which she was, but crying was one thing she did in private. So she spent a little while trying to convince herself she wasn't going to cry, and Malfoy just watched her. He stopped drinking in the duration of her mental pep talk.

"Well, if you're not going to talk, I am," he finally said, a little annoyed. "I _know_, Granger. I know about you and Potter."

"_What_?"

"Are you _kidding_?" he asked her, and there was a shocking amount of passion in this question. "I'm not blind, you know. _Look_ at you. I know it can't be your job. And I know it can't be anything else. You're a very put together girl. And I've _seen_ Potter, that pathetic excuse of a baboon's asshole. Sulking around, going out for walks, disappearing. And," he said, "you picked up _smoking_. If that's not a sign things have gone shit and down the toilet for you, then the next clear sign would've been you slitting your wrists with his razor."

Once she promptly got over her shock of him knowing, she discovered just how blatant it would be for people who knew how to look for the signs. But that was just it – _how_ did Malfoy know how to look for the signs? Maybe it was all he did. Maybe he was just one of those people who looked for rotting relationships everywhere he went.

"Breathe, Granger. You're turning blue. Relax, I appear to be the only one with clear vision around here," he muttered. "Nobody else has noticed."

They lapsed into another stretch of silence. Hermione ordered another drink. So did he. And then they drank together, silently, not saying a word. She didn't know what to say. No, that was a lie. She had a perfect idea of what to say – they were all cramming inside her skull now in a frenzy to be the first one out – but she didn't really know _how_.

So she asked the most obvious one first.

"When?"

"When Ginny announced our engagement at the party. I saw Potter make a quick beeline for the exit. And then I saw you stalk off towards the backyard to smoke your sorrows away. You're quite transparent, you know." He took a breath, though he didn't seem even a _little_ burdened with his knowledge. Maybe it was because he figured she was burdened enough for the both of them. "And besides, only a fool could think I wouldn't notice the way Potter looked at Ginny, that miserable fuck. Doesn't help that he got anti-glare lenses, either."

"Are you going to tell Ginny?"

His answer was quick and precise. "No." Then he explained. "It gets tempting at times, you know, especially when we have those long periods of silence at dinner. But why should I out him, Granger? He'll do it for himself soon enough. If he has enough self-respect, anyway. Now, my question is," he said, leaning a bit towards her, his voice smelling strongly like whiskey, "why do you let him do this to you, Granger?"

Her first instinct was to tell him about her Love switch theory. About how much easier life would be if they all had a little switch inside them that they had perfect control of. But then she realized that half-assed theories do close to no good when faced with a _real_ question related to a _real_ situation.

She told him that she really didn't know.

"Yes, you do." Then he asked her again. "_Why_ do you let him do this to you?"

This time she answered with froth, the foam – skimmed it right off the top – because she realized how much he was insisting on a _real answer_ this time. So it went like this: because she loved him. Because she, like six billion other people in this world, had this dastard belief that if she had a little patience and waited things out things would end up the way she wanted them to. And if they didn't – well, at least they'd end up _close_ to what she wanted. And Then, as she was telling him this, she realized how _stupid_ she sounded – how much of a _victim_ she was. That's the problem when they raise you up to be a good person with good person beliefs. You get really good at playing the victim. Because, more often than not, that's all you really are.

"Why," she then said to herself, realizing the depth of what she was telling him – even though it was just the froth – "am I even _telling_ you this?"

"Because," he said. "Because I _asked_. You'd be surprised what people won't tell you unless you ask. Real particularly, too. They think people won't appreciate it if they just bring it up. Or worse: that they won't know what to do with it."

* * *

If you think it's hard to explain exactly what it is that makes you fall in love with someone, it's even harder to explain why you fall _out_ of love with them. Time. Change. Someone else. Which exactly is most brutal explanation is up to the person, but to her there was no _most brutal_ choice – they were all _equally_ most brutal. Because, in a nutshell, you fall out of love with someone because what you first found in them no longer appeals to you. It got old. It became stale bread, which you then had to throw away so you could get new bread.

It's hard to think of past happenings when all you can think about is how present happenings are making you feel, but she manages to fit in the time every now and then. She does it to remind herself that Harry is not a bad person, that he does not intentionally do this to her, and that it is not his fault that he is in love with someone else. If he could help it – she was assuming – he would rather direct all of his love to her, Hermione Granger. Even though she knew that _would rathers_ don't count for most in life because it summed up some kind of failure to make things happen, once upon a time, that _would rather_ actually had been, well, _did_.

For example, take the day she, Harry, Ron and Luna had stayed over at her parents' summerhouse. She couldn't sleep due to the sticky summer heat, so she decided to bake something. She didn't bake often, and when she did, it often came out inedible (it was either still uncooked or too burnt), but she was feeling a little inspired. So she got out the dusty old cookbooks from underneath the cabinet and started to prepare the ingredients. She was missing a few of them (the summer house pantry was only ever so often stocked) so she decided she'd substitute to the best of her ability.

She was just in the process of mixing everything when Harry came down. He told her he couldn't sleep either and sat down at the table, watching her and keeping her company. It always made her feel a little better when she and Harry had alone time together – maybe because she believed in solidarity when it came to friendships, and ever since Ron had found Luna, he was eager on spending every living moment he had with her. So it was nicer being a two-thirds instead of just a one-third, and definitely healthier for her mental health when she had someone to talk to besides herself.

She'd baked chocolate cookies that night, and it hadn't looked like anything was wrong with it. Harry ate it all that she hadn't even gotten a taste, but he didn't look blue (from choking) or green (from sickness) – in fact, there had been no telltale signs that anything had gone wrong this time, and he'd looked all too happy to eat them. She did manage, however, to find one last piece later on.

That same night, she came bursting into his room.

"Harry, Harry," she said, waking him up. "I just got a taste of what I made, and. . ." She didn't have to say that it was horrible. That it had made her want to throw up everything that the cookie had touched once it had entered her mouth.

But she got one good look at his face, serious and sweaty from the summer heat, and lapsed into dead silence. There they were: two friends, a man and a woman, on a bed, near the sea. Only she could see that it had started long before that. Before he'd decided to put himself at risk for food poisoning and sickness just to prove a point. Before he'd even purposely left an extra piece out, hidden somewhere that she would surely find it. Before he'd even known she would find it and taste it and come running over to him. Before he'd even known that she would know once she got a good look at his face.

"You're going to be sick in the morning," she whispered to him, but she didn't have the heart to scold. Her heart – from what she could remember – had jumped up to her throat.

"It's not morning yet," he told her. "I have some time."

"Harry," she said, somewhat at a loss for words, "why. . . why didn't you _tell_ me?"

He smiled. "I just told you now, didn't I?"

They were silent. She felt strange. Warm, entirely too warm, but fuzzy – and not just from the heat. As she looked at him, she felt only what you could feel when you just realized that your best friend is no longer just that. And isn't it strange, she thought, that you never picture these things happening. They just do. Like falling in love with your best friend. Or getting up in the middle of the night to do something you're spectacularly horrible at. All of these things that are uncharted, that you never once stop to consider – yet you consider everything else. Like dying in a car crash. Or flying in a hot air balloon. Or even the market running out of your favorite fish. And that's what makes them even nicer, the fact that you can never see these things coming at you, the element of surprise. You are simply left there, in that moment, to soak everything in, the pleasantness, the softness, the sincerity, and a million other things that nobody ever has the time to explain.

And that was the simple yet understated way of how Harry had told her that he loved her. Needless to say, they kissed until the sun came up – and until he did get food poisoning, and was sick for two whole days in the bathroom.

"Just so you know," he called out to her while kneeling against the toilet, "I am not throwing up because we were kissing. I'm throwing up due to the events prior to the kissing. But," he said, pausing to throw up a little bit more, "I don't regret it. Not a single bit. If I had to—" he threw up some more "—I would do it all over again."

Please review!


	4. Part 4

**A/N: **The door scene here when Malfoy comes to her was something I borrowed from The Big Love by Sarah Dunn. I really liked the idea so I did a bit of insertion.

**Part 4**

It would be sick to tell you that she fantasized about the day Harry would tell Ginny – wait a second, no, fantasized wasn't the right word for it at all (because that would mean that she had invested some kind of enjoyment in it, which truly wasn't the case), but she did something close to it. What she did was this: she played out the possible scenarios in her head. When he would do it. How. The one she imagined happening the most was a very dramatic declaration in which Ginny had just reached the altar and the minister had just finished saying the phrase, "Whoever objects to this marriage, speak now or forever hold your peace." And that was when Harry would decide he could not forever hold his peace. He would bolt out of his seat beside her and do it. Declare his love for her, Ginny Weasley, in front of everyone they knew. She tried to imagine the faces of everyone around her – shock, horror, or maybe even excitement and thrill.

Elena, who was also often invited to the weddings of the people in their company, once confessed to her exactly why it was she went to weddings. "Weddings are tantamount to watching the sweaty pregnant women on airplanes," she'd told her as they sat in hard chairs waiting for the ceremony to finally start. It had been an outside wedding, on grass, and people's allergies were beginning to kick up. "The _only_ reason I get my ass out of bed at nine in the morning on a Saturday and then try to squeeze my overly large ass into a dress that's too small and wear heels that are too high – armed with a gift that is too expensive, might I add – so I can watch two people I don't even _like_ sell their soul to the devil is that hope, that teensy tiny _prayer_, that something _exciting_ will happen."

"It's a _wedding_," said Hermione. "The most exciting thing you'd expect to happen is that people will eat too much cake, get drunk, and cry."

"That," she'd whispered to her as the minister lapsed into a series of sneezes, "is _not_ to which I am referring to. What I am referring to is that little moment after the minister asks that little open-ended question pertaining to whoever objects to the marriage. And then there's that pause. . . and you know, you just _know_, that everybody is holding their breath, waiting at the edge of their seats for something to _happen_. It's an incredibly vain hope, I know, but a person's got to find light in these morbid situations _some_how."

The part she had the most difficult time imagining was the part afterwards. After Harry confessed his love and the whole frenzy of horror and shock happened. What would happen then? Would Ginny leave the altar? No matter how many times she tried to sort out the details, she could never get past the part where Harry told her, and it frustrated her because that meant that she didn't know what to expect, and hence, pathetically attempt to prepare herself for it. It was a blank page refusing to be written on, and if there was anything Hermione simply couldn't stand, it was that.

Her most recent conversation with Malfoy, however, had been. . . otherworldly. And she didn't even know if it was otherworldly and strange in a good or bad way. She had a good feeling, though, that it was a mix of both. Good in the way that _finally_, there was someone else out there who _knew_ – and bad in the way that, _Fuck_, it had to be _Malfoy_. But she accepted this. Because she was quite in touch with reality (despite her constant imaginings of her boyfriend confessing his love for someone else), and she knew that sometimes, you just don't get the chance to choose. For example, she'd once seen this documentary on a cruise liner that had been shipwrecked on some deserted island – and after weeks of waiting, they were finally rescued. By pirates. Obviously they hadn't been that specific in their prayers, but rescue was rescue, and that, in itself, made it slightly easier to digest that she'd found a sympathizing soul in Malfoy. Even though – and she could gladly recall this moment – he didn't seem to have any more of a clue what to do in their shitty circumstance than she did.

See, somebody had just put on "Everybody Loves Somebody Sometimes" and from the corner of her eye she'd seen a couple get up from the bar to dance. And as she sat there, drinking her beer, watching them and feeling the somewhat eerie music tingle through her; she realized that she had never been that kind of person. The kind of person that would just get up and dance when nobody else was – even if she was in love, and the song was good, and the moment was perfect. She watched the couple dancing by the neon jukebox, completely unashamed, and found herself wishing that things could be that simple, and easy.

"There," Malfoy told her, taking a drink, "is no such thing as simple."

"Sure there is," she said. She was a firm believer in simplicity.

"Simple is a dream. Simple is looking at something so impossibly far away that the details are invisible. Easy, however – that's something else. It's easy to fall in love with someone. But it's not simple." He looked at the couple dancing by the jukebox. "Nothing," he lowly said to her, "is simple."

She disagreed. She told him that she believed things could be simple, if people would just let them.

"But they're not. And they never can be. Because people can never resist putting the magnifying glass against the anthill, Granger. We're here where we're at now because there was always someone out there who was all too eager to dissect something and put it back together. We," he emphasized to her, "are taught to look _closely_. We're taught not to judge things by their appearance. We're taught to think things are more complicated than they are."

She was slightly in awe of him at this point, and feeling a little annoyed, too – but only because she couldn't stand that he could seemingly _know_ so much. Nobody should ever know this much. People, she had always thought, should learn how to live without getting a lot of the answers they so desperately want. Obviously, it had taken her a _long_ road to finally come to that conclusion. "You can't possibly have all the answers, Malfoy," she scoffed. Then she took a long drink. She had the idea that maybe, just possibly, if she drank more, he would make less sense and this wouldn't scare her as much.

"You're right. I don't." And then he gave her a little side-glance. And that was when she had known exactly what it was he was referring to. They sank into silence again, as she continued to watch the dancing couple out of the corner of her eye. They danced until the song ended, but she had enough mind to know that for some people, the genuinely lucky ones, the music never really ends. This was why she disagreed with Malfoy. See, with some things, it was just as simple as that.

* * *

Hermione could pinpoint the exact moment when Harry had let her know that he'd planned out his entire future with her. Not that she'd been avidly searching for hints or clues – she had actually, at that moment, hadn't given it much serious thought. But as she thought back to it and tried to squeeze out whatever knowledge or facts she'd happened to miss due to possible complete ignorance, she realized why that moment could have possibly fucked their relationship over. See, the thing is, you should never really plan out your entire future with the one you think you're going to end up with, in the end. You can visualize it, and you can sure as hell fantasize about it – but you should never plan it. Because that means that your future with that person had to include these specific moments for it to work – and relying on such fickle and ambiguous details such as those are always a bad idea from day one. It also means that you are trying to read cards that haven't even reached the table yet. Which means that you will – inevitably – lose.

It was just after they had finished having sex. There was snow falling outside; there was always something about having sex while it's snowing outside for her. For some reason, it made it feel more intimate. Maybe because when she was little, she remembered stepping outside after the first full snow, and everything seemed quieter. Muffled. As if the snow had made the town quieter, more peaceful, and everything was enveloped in white – just like in her dreams.

"I have a question," said Harry. He'd snaked his arm around her shoulders and he was holding her close, his voice low and quiet against her hair. "But under no circumstances do I want you to freak out when I mention it."

"Well. I'll be sure to keep that in mind, then."

She felt him breathe softly against her hair. "Hermione, do you ever think about the future?"

She was silent then, waiting for the punch line – the part where she was supposedly supposed to freak out. It was a moment later when she realized that there was no impending punch line, that that had been it. "That's it? That's why you didn't want me to freak out? Boy, do you exaggerate sometimes."

"I was assuming you would assume that there are quite several tangents attached to the topic."

"Such as?"

"I don't know. Things related to the future."

"You mean like the weather? Or, perhaps, our failing economy?"

That was when she felt him smile against her temple. That was one of those things that she constantly worked her way towards – the smile against her temple. Because, see, the thing is, there are a lot of things about being in love that you will absolutely, one-hundred percent think is pure bullshit when you hear about it. You will think, _No way, that's just sappy shit_. You will think that it is ridiculous to get excited about, that you'd probably get more excited about your first cup of coffee in the morning, or your first paycheck – and then you'll forget about it. And then you'll fall in love. And then you'll _feel_ all of that "bullshit" and realize that it's all true – or maybe just most of them – but you won't really remember to _contradict_ yourself. That's the thing about being in love. Suddenly the things you mocked and thought were stupid become unimportant, because it doesn't matter, because you _don't care_. You learn how to accept things as they are. Like the way it feels when he smoothes your hair out of your face so that he can look at you, _really_ look at you. Or the way it feels when he smiles against your skin, and the fact that you don't need to see it to know that it's there.

Another thing about being in love is that things get quieter inside your head. That's why it becomes so livable, why people so willingly bind themselves to that state. It's such a pure distraction and that niggling voice inside your head is instantly silenced because what you're feeling right now is something that it knows it can't fight.

"Bigger than the weather, Hermione." He paused for a minute. "It scares me to think that some things can be so easy. Everything else is. . ." he trailed off, knowing that he didn't have to explain. She knew what he meant.

"Maybe it's compensation," she told him. "Maybe life feels guilty. Maybe it's cutting you some well-deserved slack." She thought about it. "You're always ready to lose something, Harry. It shouldn't be that way."

"Please don't analyze me, Hermione," he whispered, laughing quietly. "We were talking about the future. I just. . . wanted you to know. I can live with this. For a really long time."

"This?"

"This. This easiness. You."

* * *

"Well, hello there, Granger. How goes things?" he asked, putting down his glass. "Still in love with a man that loves somebody else?"

When you come across certain people, it is sometimes easy to tell right off the bat why you two won't hit it off. She found this skill to be a very valuable necessity in dating – or in life in general. And usually, when she came across cases when there was a definite clash of personalities, she generally had no problem with it because, see, she had come to accept a very long time ago that there are certain types of people that are dispensable and some that are not. Having said this, this was a perfect example of why she and Malfoy could never be friends. One: he was a cruel bastard. And two: he wasn't funny.

"You," she told him, somewhat wishing his dick would shrivel up and fall off before their honeymoon, "are getting married in two weeks. I highly suggest you use this time to clean up your act. You're going to need every bit of it, trust me."

"Granger, it's a wedding, not the initiation of a totalitarian dictatorship."

"I beg to differ." She opened up her planner, and lo and behold, there it was. The circled date of their wedding, just a little over two weeks away. To be completely honest, she tried her best to jump right past it. Because no matter how many times she'd happened to see it as she flipped through her planner to check her next doctor's appointment, the way her body reacted upon seeing the bolded red print never seemed to lose any of its vigor. It always made it a little harder to breathe. It also instilled a bit of panic in her that she then tried to hide away, even from herself. It was stupid. It was silly. She should've gotten used to it by now. After all, she'd been planning their wedding this entire time! It just didn't make any sense.

They were down to the last hectic seconds, and it showed. "You look so focused," Elena had said to her one day, when she'd been making calls during her lunch break. "I almost believe that you actually expect this wedding to go through."

"So. Any progress?"

"Progress?" she scoffed. "I just planned your entire wedding. Everything is now set in stone, unless either one of you dies." Or backs out.

"You know that's not what I meant."

There were several possible consequences to actually answering his question – but despite herself, she told him. Maybe because she'd been engulfed by the logic of – what the hell, he already knew what kind of shit she was buried in, anyway. What was the point of hiding things from the one person who actually _knew_?

In a way it soothed the burn in her chest, but it was painful to admit out loud. It made her throat ache with dryness, so she chugged down her water afterwards. The pain dulled, but now there was pressure in her lungs.

"What are you waiting for, Granger?" he asked her, a bit snottily. Then he leaned in closer to her. "You have to be waiting for _some_thing. You're in the same place you started. Keep in mind, Granger," he said, putting his flask back into his coat pocket, "that you are the only one in control of this situation. And you are the only one who can possibly change it."

She thought long and hard about this – about what he'd told her. For an entire week, in fact. She thought about it the nights she couldn't sleep. She thought about it during the fifteen minutes it took to make her coffee. She even thought about it when she watched the news, with Harry's note forgotten beside her palm, drinking her wine. She even thought about it as Harry stood right there in front of her. Back then, when Harry was there – physically at least, if not emotionally – she would focus all of her attention on him, and more. She would analyze him. She would watch the heaviness of his shoulders and the dullness of his eyes. She would try her damndest to try to figure out how to make him _better_. Her thoughts would scamper to compose what could be the winning sentence that would make him look at her again, the way he used to. Now – now it was different. Not drastically so, but it was a mild settling in her bones, something that bound her to her chair. When she looked at him, she saw the man she loved that didn't love her back, in black and white. And she was starting to see, finally, that this was the end.

It was, however, a slow acceptance. You shouldn't be surprised to know that it takes quite a while to un-attach yourself, part by part, from a person. Because, in a way, there will always be a little part of yourself that wants to hold on, just because it needs to, just because it's gotten so used to it. But there is a difference between not being able to live without a person and committing to live with them for a very, very long time. Of course, she doesn't know what it is. But at least she knows that there is one.

A week and a half flew by without so much as a conscious effort. Before she knew it, she was at her final meeting with Ginny and Malfoy to finalize the wedding plans. She did her best to avoid any one-on-one encounters with Malfoy – just because. And, for once, that reason sufficed. It didn't help that she still felt uneasy whenever she felt his gaze on her – they were always intensely focused, and she knew that this was because he was just waiting for her to crack. That was Malfoy, and she never did forget it. He was always waiting for her to crack first. There he was, sitting, going over their wedding plans, as if unperturbed by their common knowledge that something was bubbling underneath the surface of their own relationships. . . and he was so infuriatingly _good_ at it. At _not being fazed_. What _was_ that? Did some people just have this uncanny skill to be able to completely mask themselves from the outside world? But she knew better than to envy it too much. She knew better than to think that it always worked in their favor – because, when you really think about it, not very many things actually do.

* * *

She had various reasons why this wasn't the end of the world. For one: they were young. Two: it wasn't like they were married, or had even really _talked_ about it. Three: he didn't love her, so she had nothing to lose. And four: she was resilient. If anything, she was resilient. And finally, five: because she wasn't going to let it be. Because she was sure, she was absolutely sure, that things would pick up right where she left off, with or without certain parts of her internal anatomy. She was confident that the fact that she had let it drag on for so long would reassure her that she'd done enough waiting. And, in a way, it had prepared her to receive what was possibly, surely coming.

She didn't know how she felt at first, but now she was starting to feel what was beginning to look like relief that he'd listened to her. That, at least, for a moment that could actually _matter_ in his life – he'd listened to her. She looked at herself in the mirror and rubbed the part of her forehead that he'd kissed before he'd left, and it burned. It was red, just like the padding of her finger that she rubbed it with.

She'd never seen this side of the story before. Not on TV, not in movies, not in books. This must be what it feels like, she thought to herself, staring at the red blotch on her forehead, to be the one that doesn't get the declaration of love – the one that gets left behind. And isn't it just absolutely _fucked up_ to the highest degree that they never _do_ tell you about the one the protagonist leaves behind to be with the one he loves? Not that she was bitter. She wasn't bitter. Okay, maybe she was, a little bit. But she got the sense that people generally do not _care_ about the people who unknowingly stand in the way of true love. Even the bad people get more love than the faceless "other lovers" do. And that was what she was. The faceless "other lover" that, for a very long time, perhaps, stood in the way of true love, if there was such a thing. If this were a movie, you would not care about her. You _could_ feel sorry for her – but that drop of sympathy you could have you could not possibly retain, because you'd be too busy being happy for the people who _do_ happen to get together, in the end. The ones the story revolves around. For some reason, it felt like – even in her own life, in her own shoes – her _own_ story never seemed to revolve around her. And it was utterly, utterly sad. And it left her feeling a little. . . confused, angry, and at a loss.

So there she was, at her sink, as Harry Potter chased after the woman he loved, a day before her wedding. What was it with the climactic, dramatic timings of confessions that were always the least convenient for all parties concerned?

She got out of her bathroom, heading towards the living room to watch the news. That was when she heard a knock on her door. She muted the news, wondering if it had taken Harry that quick to tell Ginny that he loved her. Maybe he'd changed his mind on his way there and had decided to come back. Or – maybe he'd abruptly died, and this was a policeman coming to tell her the tragic news.

But when she looked through the little peephole of her door, she realized that it wasn't Harry. It, in fact, was someone entirely different.

"I just thought you should know," she heard Malfoy say through the door, "that your boyfriend is confessing his love to my fiancé."

She stared at him for a second, her eye to the peephole. She hesitated, leaning back on the balls of her feet away from the hole, before leaning forward to look again. She had a very hard time believing his distorted image through the glass, his blond head looking larger than usual, his expensive leather shoes on the faded green carpet of her apartment hallway. "Shit," she muttered, before she finally decided to open the door. Whatever conversation they were going to have – it was bad enough that her neighbors had probably heard the first thing he'd said – it was probably best to have indoors.

"I know," she said to him. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be over there, kicking his ass in front of your woman so you can show her who's a better man?" Wasn't that the normal male reaction to this sort of thing? "Get away from my woman, I'll hand you your balls on a plate"? Because, if so, she genuinely had no fucking idea why Malfoy was _here_, on _her_ doorstep, instead of defending his position as the groom-to-be, or at least as the _other_ man who claimed to love Ginny. She then thought of the fact that maybe he had come over here to ask for back up.

He looked amused. "You," he told her, "have a strange comprehension of men." He paused. "But no, you're right." Yet he came in, settling his eyes on the muted television set. They were showing a dog food commercial. A golden retriever was running across a green meadow with a silky, shiny coat.

"To be clear," she said to him, "I'm still really confused as to why you're here."

"So am I."

"Well, at least we're on the same page." She paused, remembering what he'd told her about being on the same page, not too long ago. "Together."

They both stood there, watching the next commercial that happened to come on. It was one about anti-depressants, which was oddly sort of relevant to their situation. Hermione had her fair share of awkward silences in her life – she was, after all twenty-three – but this had to be one for the top of the list. There was no possible way that she could have seen this as an event stemming from Harry going off to chase Ginny – that Malfoy would be here with her now, watching muted commercials on her television.

His voice was oddly quiet and low when he spoke. "Granger, did you know that one in five adults come to the realization that they very possibly married the wrong person?"

It then occurred to her that this could possibly be the start of a very serious and soul-revealing conversation. It was true to her knowledge that nobody brings up marriage statistics unless they are a) bitter, b) want to have a completely soul-bearing conversation, or c) all of the above.

She knew a person in doubt when she saw one. She recognized the look very well. She always compared it to the look her friend Liz's daughter had when her mother had sat her down on Santa's lap in the department store and he proceeded to ask her what she wanted for Christmas. It was – more or less – the same look, with a few subtle alterations. But as she looked at Malfoy, the incredibly smooth skin of his face, and the way it seemed emotionless – not blank, just emotionless. Or maybe unreadable was more the word. And what was even stranger was that in all of this confusion and weirdness was that she found it very hard to hate him. That's the thing. It's really hard to hate assholes when they _aren't_ being assholes, even though you know for a fact that it's who they are.

She realized that she had gotten so used to being able to read Harry all the time that it mildly frustrated her that she couldn't read _him_.

"You should be over there, you know that? Not here. But over _there_. With Ginny. And, quite possibly, giving Harry a good ass-kicking."

They lapsed into another awkward silence. The news was back on, showing a brutal car accident.

"I'm going to be completely honest with you now, Granger," he said, and she didn't know why – after all, how could she possibly – but she felt her heart skip a beat at that. She looked at him, intrigued and alarmed and curious. "It's very likely that by the end of tonight, the wedding will be off."

That was when she asked him how he could seem so calm about all of this. So unfazed. He had just announced that his wedding was not going to go through, and he was not ready to rip throw pillows into shreds, nor was he ready to beat the shit out of the man that was the reason for all of this – which, she kept pointing out, was still an _option_. The man was a boulder. He was immovable. It was extraordinary. It was scary.

"You don't love her." Her voice was dull. A little devastated, but also a little snotty.

What she didn't understand was the simple fact that some people could go on for years under some kind of impression that they love someone -- and then, one day, realize that they aren't. As if overnight they had some kind of epiphany, or something had changed. Maybe they decided they wanted a blond. Or a redhead. Or they wanted someone who would take them out to candlelit dinners and make them feel special -- or someone who maybe cared a little less. Or cared a little more. There were just so many variables but none of them, not one, answered her question. Maybe falling out of love with someone is just something that takes place in the human subconscious -- behind the scenes, as it were, and you are only aware of the changes once the curtain opens, and you are in the audience, helpless as can be. Maybe the only substantial, trustworthy fact is the fact that you have no control of it, none whatsoever -- that you are just the leaf riding the wind.

He had a systematic response to this. "There are various forms of love, Granger. Mine just happened to be the wrong kind."

"The _wrong kind_?"

This might be a common misconception. To straighten things out, there is no such thing as a "wrong kind" of love. There are many types of love – but there is no category labeled "wrong." The two words simply don't go together – they weren't _made_ to – and this was where Malfoy had made his colossal mistake. It's either love or it's not. There is no derivative, or substitution, or dilution of love. It is simply Love, As Is. And so she told him all of this, trying to make him see the error of his ways. And he just listened along, watching the news, until she finally finished and he turned his head to look at her.

"You're right. Maybe," he told her, "I didn't love her after all."

It didn't make her feel any better. It didn't even make her feel a _little_ bit better that he'd seen the logic in her lecture and retracted his original comment. All she could think about, really, was Ginny, who had lived these past few months under the misconception that she was getting married to a man who loved her – when, really, there _was_ a man who loved her, but it wasn't the one she was marrying. She wondered whether Ginny had even the smallest inkling about Malfoy's feelings. After all, that was what women did. They _felt_ things, especially _bad_ things, before they happened.

"That's unforgivable. It absolutely is."

His eyebrows rose to his forehead. "I didn't know that not loving somebody was a sin."

"It isn't," she said, feeling a flash of hurt, deep inside her, "but it should be."

He looked at her then. _Really_ looked at her. It's hard to explain just what differentiates a regular look and a look that really drills into you and really just tries to _inhale_ you, in a sense – but just trust in the fact that when it happens you'll _know_ it without question – but that's what he did. And it scared her. And that was when the first inkling began to blossom, and when that blossom turned into something a little bit bigger than a blossom – right until it was a full-fledged realization that seemed to shake her right down to her bones.

Anybody can tell you that nobody will ever give you that look if they were _just_ coming over to tell you your boyfriend was confessing his love for their fiancé. It's unsummonable until the moment – the right moment – that it suddenly is. It's a secret look securely reserved for one special purpose. She knew this.

The thing with thinking you know someone is that you get a good feel of what's unique and what's not.

He looked back towards the TV.

"That's the thing," said Malfoy. "It's just universally impossible. You can't choose who to love. It goes against nature, and it goes against the most basic standard of living things – and mostly: against the humanity of humankind. Because if we could, we'd all just choose the person we thought would never hurt us." She remembered that a man once told her that without pain, there would be no art. "And we," the man had then added, "wouldn't be half as alive as we are now."

She took all of this into careful consideration.

"I," she finally said, letting out a shaky breath of air, "need a drink."

Please review!


	5. Part 5

**A/N**: Okay, so I know it's been like a bajillion years, and I sincerely apologize. But I am here to make sure this fanfic ends in the way it deserves! And YES, this IS the final chapter! If you're here, reading this – and most likely having to reread the past 4 parts because it's been so long – I love you, and thank you. Please forgive me?

**PART 5.**

She didn't allow herself to find out what had happened afterwards. Even her most masochistic tendencies couldn't push her towards that. The truth was that everything – all of it: Harry going over to break up Ginny's engagement, and Malfoy, instead of defending his pending matrimony, had come over _here_, to _her_ place – had made her finally reach her limit and what had then manifested was the split-second decision to pack up some clothes and head to her parents' old beach house. She was doing it: she was finally running away. After all, no logical, sane woman would have stayed. No logical, sane woman would have stayed to see her entirely world fall apart and then be able to sleep in the same bed and make the same cup of coffee.

So she ended up going someplace she knew the news would never reach her.

* * *

It was around 3 in the morning when she had thrown her overnight bag into the back seat and began driving to the beach house. It would be at least a two hour drive, but the roads would be quiet and empty, so she welcomed it. As she drove she tried to think of why she hadn't done this sooner. Maybe it was her constant need to see things through – her dependability and loyalty. Good Old Dependable and Loyal Hermione. Who would have known that her best qualities would have led to the slow yet inevitable unraveling of her life? Who would have known that her loyalty to her friend and her love for him would have caused her to painstakingly stick by him even as he longed for someone else? But who _could_ have known, really? Hadn't she done right by everyone – even at the cost of her own happiness – or at least tried to? Because it was one thing to deserve what was coming to you; it was something else entirely to be blindsided.

She tried not to feel so alone. She couldn't possibly be the only woman in history that this had to have happened to, and she knew legitimately that she wasn't. She thought back to all of those nights she had stayed up, flipping through channels, occasionally catching the end of some Woman Scorned-themed made for TV movie. But even that didn't make her feel any less utterly alone. For one: more or less, they had ended on a good note, full of hope and with a beacon of light shining at the end of the tunnel. But if her life was anything, it was not a movie, and so she accepted that there was a high chance she would not be getting the cinematically satisfying ending she had grown so used to seeing.

She put on a CD that her mom had given her for Christmas. It was a Best of the Beach Boys album. She turned it up loud and rolled down her windows, trying to sing along in that pathetic way someone only does when they need something – anything – to do to keep from crying. Even when no one was watching, she felt the need to keep up the phony pretense that she was happy. Not even happy, per se, but okay. Okay was fine. Okay was bearable. Okay was at least scraping by. Okay was singing "Fun, fun, fun" against the painful lump in her throat and skipping right past "Wouldn't it be nice?" to "California Girls."

This was why she needed to get away – to be alone, and unreachable for awhile. Because she'd realized something: in the midst of all the falling-apart and the chaos of the wedding, she had lost herself. Not in the way that you would absentmindedly drop your keys on the street or lose your pin number, but lost as in a gradual fade. That was the worst of it. So gradual that she hadn't even known it until she had looked Malfoy in the eye.

When she reached the house, the sky had lightened and the sun was on its way up. She dug out the spare key from a loose plank in the patio. Even inside, she could hear the crunch of the sand underneath her shoes.

She went into her old room and slipped back into bed. She tried to think of the last time she'd been here. It must've been summers ago. Judging from an old summer dress she still had hanging up, she had gained at least two dress sizes since then. Her old bunny, Mr. Carrot, is still perched on her nightstand, and so is her shell collection.

Then she closed her eyes. She sleeps for days.

* * *

That night she'd gone into the kitchen to make herself a drink. What she had really intended on doing was plunging her face into a sink full of freezing water. See, she'd realized that she was in a fairly delicate position. Malfoy was in her living room, watching infomercials, probably expecting her to come back out of the kitchen _some_ time. The god-awful reality was that she didn't want to. If only there was some hidden trapdoor underneath her kitchen left over from the 1950's that she didn't know about, one that led to a safe place where she could just hide out and take everything in. Preferably in the fetal position, or in a nice aromatherapy bubble bath.

She wanted to wonder how things were going with Harry. If he, like all other heartbroken heroes before him, was saying all of the right things to Ginny, and if she, like all other beautiful girls before her, was crying and believing any of it. But right now, she was also a little preoccupied with the situation in her living room. She wasn't even sure if she could rightly call it a situation. It was just Malfoy, acting so unnervingly calm about his fiancé being stolen away by her (ex) boyfriend. She couldn't even explain it; it just made her _feel_ funny.

She opened up a beer and she sat at her kitchen table, drinking. Ten minutes later Malfoy was back within her line of view. He was standing in her kitchen doorway, with his hands in his pockets. She watched him carefully without even knowing it. Why were his hands always in his damn pockets? And why did it suddenly bother her so much?

She thought about how great it must be to be him. Even now – _especially_ now. To be here and not give a single shit that his wedding would probably be called off. To be here and have absolutely nothing to lose – because he didn't love her. It was this position was infinitely superior to that of hers. He had all the power and she had none.

"Aren't you going to offer me one?" he asked her, a little smugly. "I am your guest, after all."

Then something interesting happened. She looked at him, and she suddenly saw the reason why everything in her life had fallen to fantastically gruesome shreds. He came in, and suddenly it was as clear to her as if he had walked into the Burrow, all those months ago, with Ginny in one hand and a bomb detonator in the other. Like the way tragic events in history worked, people could always trace the beginning of destruction to the entrance of one person. Just one measly person at first – easily lost in a crowd, barely anything to whisper about. But at the end they would be the face you'd remember, because they would be the one standing above all the rubble, laughing at the world.

"No, you're an intruder," she said. "Not only that, but you're a life-ruiner. The minute you showed up, Malfoy, you ruined everything. Just – everything. Everybody's lives have been ruined because of you."

The entire time, he had played a victim, just like her – a cooler, more unfazed victim, but a victim just the same. But he had lied. He held a position of power, just like Harry, and just like Ginny. That was what lack of love gave people – power. She held none of it because she loved Harry. He had all of it because he didn't love her. And Malfoy could stand in her kitchen doorway with his hands in his pockets in _exactly this way_ because he was on the verge of losing absolutely nothing.

She heard him quietly scoff. He didn't move his hands from his pockets. "Look, it's not my fault that Potter's in love with Ginny, all right? He would've figured it out sooner or later. He's stupid, but he's not that stupid."

"You don't know that."

"And what about you? Just standing around, _waiting_ for him to leave you? Are you going to say that's my fault, too? From the very first day it happened," he said to her, squinting his eyes, "you _knew_. And yet you stayed. Why, Granger? Is it because you're an optimist? You think just because you're a good person, good things happen to you? Or is it because you're afraid? Potter was easy until he wasn't, am I right?"

"Fuck you," she spat at him. "I am a great person. I am a fucking great person. And I am not afraid."

He scoffed at her. Louder this time. "Bullshit."

"And what about you, Malfoy, huh?" she said, getting up to her feet. Beside her, her hands shook. "What are you afraid of? Why are you here? Why aren't you with Ginny, instead, burying your fist into Harry's face? That's it, isn't it?" she said, a sudden realization coming over her, her voice getting louder with triumph. "You're scared _shitless_ to be there when she picks him over you. And that's why you're hiding out here." She took two quick strides over to him. "Well, guess what? _Fuck you_. I don't want you here. _Get out_." And then she shoved him.

His hands came out of his pockets. At first she'd thought it was so he could try to regain his balance, but his balance was just fine. Instead he had grabbed her shoulders.

"Typical of you," he said. She had gotten him now. His eyes were flashing. "Sticking up for Potter when he's just left you for your best friend's sister." His voice was hurried but hoarse. "Don't you get it, Granger? We were with the wrong people."

She heard him but she didn't want to think about it. In her mind, she had already made him up as the ultimate enemy of her happiness, which made it an incredible time for deflecting and/or denying anything significant or true that he might have said. And so that was what she did. Mentally, she deflected him. Physically, she pushed him again.

"Stop it!" she said to him, shoving his hands off of her. "Stop acting like we're on the same side! We're not! You don't even love her!"

Which was true. So true that she started to cry. The thing with crying is that it always happens at the most inopportune moment – at a time that starting to cry would possibly rob you of whatever integrity you had just happened to crawl away with. You always cry with every bit of yourself refusing to. What's interesting is that your willpower has nothing to do with vulnerability and how your body inevitably chooses to show it. She had a great amount of willpower, but that didn't stop her from unwillingly crying in front of Malfoy. And God, she hated herself for it now and forever; for as long as she would have the misfortune of retaining the ability to remember this very moment.

He looked at her with his face pulled so tightly that if she hadn't known better, she would have thought he was in pain, too. He told her that she was right – he didn't love her. And then he had opened his mouth to say something else, but he closed it up again without saying another word.

And then he quickly left.

For that, a little part of her was grateful to him.

* * *

When she woke up, it was around noon. She had slept so long that the only difference between being asleep and being awake was that she had a headache and that her skull felt somewhere around a hundred pounds. Everywhere on her body she could feel evidence of an overwhelming desire to no longer participate in life's emotional Olympics, so she laid there for another hour with her eyes to the ceiling, wondering how things had since changed since she had left home. The good part was that she didn't even attempt to imagine the Happily Ever After of her now-former boyfriend and her possibly now-former friend. For once, she didn't know how to.

After showering and eating, she took a walk on the beach. Being far away from the grotesque birth place of your problems always makes it a little easier to cope: the actual, physical distance made her breathe easier. She walked along the shoreline and inhaled the fresh ocean air. And then she called Elena.

"Where the hell have you been?" was how she'd greeted her, after her secretary had passed on the call. "Dave went nuts. Everybody thought you were dead or joined a cult."

"Tell Dave I had an emergency. I need a week."

"As relieved as I am that you are finally using up your vacation days," Elena said, "what the hell happened to you? Where are you?"

She sighed. "I'm at my parents' beach house. I just needed a break, that's all."

Elena was silent for a second. "Shit. It fell apart, didn't it? Are you okay? No, don't answer that. Of course you're not, that's why you need a fucking vacation on a nice peaceful beach. Anyway, call me if you need anything else. Also, some people have stopped by here looking for you." She paused uncertainly, and Hermione knew exactly who she meant had stopped by. "If I had known, Hermione, I would have punched him square in the jaw when he came in here, I swear."

A picture of Elena, in her navy blazer and tortoiseshell glasses, punching Harry flashed in her mind and for the first time in what felt like a very long time, she felt herself smile. "Listen, don't tell anyone where I am, okay?"

"Hey, if you want to disappear for awhile," she said, "you disappear. I'll be here when you get back."

She drove into town to buy groceries for the week that she'd decided she was staying. She picked up some fruits and fresh vegetables and even stopped by a few of the places she had loved while she had been growing up. Namely, the old-timey ice cream shoppe with her favorite kind of cotton candy ice cream. Even years later, in her adult life, she spontaneously craved this one specific _thing_ from her childhood. Every time she thought of it, the memory of the first time she'd ever had it was never far behind, as if eternally attached, like tiny balls of lint to her favorite sweater. She'd been eight and had just skinned her knee running after her balloon. Her parents, like all good parents, took her to the ice cream shoppe to make her feel better. In the most simplistic of ways, it comforted her. It took her back to a time and place where just the first lick of a cotton candy ice cream could make all the bad and hurt disappear.

In a kind of foolish, childish way, she sat there and hoped it would do the trick, just like it always used to. That the cloud of sadness would lift and she would be lost in its sweet, pastel swirl – it didn't work, of course, because she knew better. Adulthood stole those things from you. It made you calculated and cold and doubtful of things that seemed too easy. Now everything good that didn't eventually take something from you all seemed so imaginary.

* * *

She didn't give much credit to dreams – or deciphering them. To her, dream interpretation was about as cracked up as Divination. There was no clear logic to it, let alone clear standards that could make it even the least bit credible. But that night she dreamt about Draco Malfoy. Real vivid, too – at first she wasn't even aware that it was a dream. It had been so clear that she could see every indigo fleck in his unnervingly pale eyes and every blond strand of hair. The only reason she'd known it was a dream because of how she felt around him: safe, and comforted. She was too guarded to feel any of that around him in reality. This was because every time she saw Malfoy, she had a flashback of her childhood – and him in it – which never failed in conjuring up some old feelings of anger and annoyance.

In her dream, she felt none of that. In fact, in her dream, she had been standing in a crowd of people, waiting for something. Then she saw the white flowers and the church doors open and she realized, quite bitterly, that she was there for a wedding. Ironic thing was that she knew exactly whose wedding it was. She also knew that she – even in delusional Dream World – couldn't stay. So she started to squeeze through the people as fast as she possibly could, with her heart beating loudly as the organ began to play and fill up the church.

She made it out in time. She found herself in a nice little garden, and then she looked up, and Malfoy was there. As usual, he had his hands in his pockets.

"What are you doing here?" she asked him.

"I knew you'd come running out here, eventually," he said, ignoring her question. So she asked it again.

"I guess," he said, looking right at her. "Waiting for you."

Except she knew that he wasn't guessing. She didn't know how, but it was Dream World, and anything and everything usually goes in Dream World. When she woke up back in reality, she would try to shake off the weird feeling her dream gave her, but the remnants would stay. That was what made it even more impossible not to think of him.

She refused to analyze her dream because she lacked the imagination to. Instead she focused on the last few days with him. How he had shown up at her apartment and had given her that look and grabbed her by the shoulders – their first real act of physical contact. "Don't you get it?" he'd said to her. "We were with the _wrong people_." She hadn't wanted to let that sink in at that moment because she knew that it meant something – something so much bigger than what she was ready for. It was, in every sense of the word, a game-changer.

Taking it simply at face-value, he was right. They _were_ with the wrong people. That's why things ended up the way they had, and why she was now hiding away in her parents' beach house, two hours away. But she knew better than to think that face-value was all it had going for it, because of that look in his eyes that she had never really seen before, and the way the air refused to settle between them afterwards. She hadn't even realized she'd been holding her breath until he had let go of her.

It'd scared her because it was different. In that sole moment in time, _he_ had been different. He had stepped out of the shoes of the role she'd molded him into and had completely broken character, and that had scared her.

Now the only problem was whether she could allow herself to believe any of it.

* * *

Eventually, she went back to her life. She packed up her meager belongings, locked up the sandy house, and drove the two hours back. She was a grown-up, after all. That was what grown-ups did. They ran away for a little while, but they were always supposed to come back and pick up where they left off.

There was a process for grieving and loss and acceptance, and she knew this. There was also a process for walking up the steps to the apartment that you and your boyfriend had formerly lived in to promptly pack up your things and find another place to live. Due to short notice, she had decided that she was just going to show up at her parents' house with all of her things. If that was an inconvenience, then she would go back to the beach house. After a while, she knew she wouldn't mind the sand. Ambitious that she was, she would find some way to make it work.

When she walked in, the apartment seemed empty. As she walked around, she noticed that everything looked the same but that nothing felt the same. She took her wand from her coat pocket and watched as all of her belongings began to pack themselves up. But the problem seemed to lie with the things that she and Harry had bought jointly, and thus belonged to the both of them – equally. Even magic couldn't discern this so she watched as she and Harry's vinyl collection began to spark and push back and forth, as if caught in an invisible game of Tug of War.

"Hermione."

And then there he was, standing behind her. It's interesting how seeing a person, face to face, makes everything even realer. As if the past week had all been but a dream, just phantom feelings and forged emptiness – and then she saw him, and it swooped all over her again, a fresh dusting of pain and betrayal.

"I'm just packing my things," she said. "I'll be done in ten minutes."

Her throat felt painfully congested with the things she wanted to say, but the logical part of her won out by reminding her that nothing she could say would change things. It had already happened. It was done. Words, however well-intended, were useless to their relationship now.

"Listen." His face was crumpled with guilt, and she looked away. But she let him apologize, and let him call himself a dick and a terrible human being. The truth was that she should have been happy listening to his self-deprecating monologue, but she'd already known his flaws. She saw them way before he ever did. She hated them now but she had also once loved them, not too long ago.

In the end he told her that he hoped she would forgive him someday. "I did a bad thing, Hermione, and I don't expect to be forgiven any time soon," he'd said to her. "But you're still my best friend, and I still love you. Always."

Her things had finished packing and had shrunk themselves to fit very neatly into the enchanted suitcase she had brought. She looked at him, and there was no doubt she still loved him, but he was wrong. She shook her head.

"Harry," she said. "I don't think that you should say that to me."

With his eyes still steady on her, he quietly asked why not.

"Because if that were true, Ginny would be married to Malfoy by now. And you and I – maybe we would be having brunch somewhere, or still be in bed, telling funny stories. But we're not. We're not. Do you get that?"

He did. He solemnly nodded his head.

She grabbed her suitcase and left.

* * *

It wasn't that Hermione didn't believe that Harry loved her. Deep down, she knew that he genuinely, honestly did. She also knew that he could never un-love her, either. It was just that Elena had once told her that you couldn't love two people equally at once. "What I mean is," she'd said, moving her cigarette away from her mouth, "there are no halfsies. Not equally, anyway. If you love two people, you will always love one person more. A little bit more, a lot more – it doesn't make a difference, the point is: you will always love one more. And that will be the person you ultimately choose. At the end of the day, that will be the person that will ultimately make you happy. I mean, there are some things you share, you know? Like gum and sweaters and phone numbers. Your heart," she said, pouring her a drink, "is not one of them. It's just not."

* * *

It would be months later when she sees him. At least, when she _thinks_ she sees him – in reality, it wasn't actually him, but a man that had slightly similar hair color. She's aware enough to know that this was what wishful thinking did to a person. She mistook every single platinum blond man in a dark coat as him, only to approach them with a thudding heart to realize that, besides sharing a similar shade of hair color, they looked nothing like him at all.

"Why don't you just call him?" Elena said, one day over coffee, after she'd caught her eyes trailing after a blond man across the street. "It's been months. And you might get a reputation as some kind of desperate blond-chaser."

"It's not that simple."

She tried to imagine that conversation, especially since Draco Malfoy did _not_ own a phone, so she would have to communicate by owl. That made things even more difficult to initiate, even disregarding the fact that she had almost literally beat him out of her apartment. When she had told Elena about this, she barely budged, saying, "See? Like I said. Repressed feelings of frustration. I told you to take that kick-boxing class with me. I told you but you didn't listen. So you beat the one guy that might actually love you. Naturally."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, right. Childhood rivalry stuff. He made fun of your teeth, or something."

"Okay, it was a lot more serious than that." More like years and years of torment.

"Of course it was," she said. "But is any of that even relevant? To now, I mean. To you _now_. You're an adult, Hermione. Your ex-boyfriend left you for your other best friend's sister. Didn't that painful, screwed up little event motivate you to just get up and do whatever the hell you feel like doing?"

She thought about that for a second. The weird thing about life was that everywhere you went, people were telling you to take chances, to take risks, and to do whatever the hell you wanted – Carpe diem! and all of that fortune cookie crap. They rarely mentioned the consequences. They tell you to go sky diving but they never tell you that thirty people die sky-diving every year. They'd just tell you that wasn't the point. The point was grabbing life by the horns and being open to the infinite possibilities.

She was familiar with concept but she had never really _considered_ it, to do _whatever the hell she wanted_. She was too considerate that way. She recognized that sudden change made people uncomfortable and she was too polite to do that to them. But Elena had a point. She was at that rare summit in her life where she really didn't care about inconveniencing people, because hadn't they already inconvenienced _her_?

She stared at Elena, who was dumping another packet of sugar into her coffee. Behind her she watched a couple laughing over a funny story one of them had told.

"But," Hermione said quietly, "how do I know if it's real?"

She didn't even look up. "You don't."

"Then why even try? Why go, if there's even a possibility that it's not real?"

"Because," she said, leaning in towards her. Hermione noticed the cream on her bottom lip. "Because what's the alternative? Sitting here and having coffee and wondering, asking the same questions over and over. Maybe it's not real. But maybe it is. You're sure as hell not going to find out just sitting here."

She sat there for a second, taking it in. The same couple behind her erupted into another fit of laughter, blissful in their sparkling relationship abyss. And then she grabbed her coat.

* * *

The first time she'd decided to go after him, in the café, she was almost halfway there when she turned back around. To be fair, it really was nothing like how they showed it in the movies. Emotionally, it was both staggering and traumatizing. There was no hip yet poignant soundtrack playing in the background, no nosy yet inspiring cab driver. Five minutes after, the adrenaline had worn off and all she was left with was self-doubt. Even more, she realized that she was not ready, and she wanted to be – completely. She wanted to be able to stand in front of him and not be a wreck. As ridiculous as it was, she wanted to be worth it – not for him, but for herself. That way, if things didn't turn out the way she hoped, she would still be okay. Alone, but still always okay.

The second time was purely accidental. She'd just spent the day with Luna and Ron when, in coming back, she had passed by the shop she'd remembered entering with Malfoy. She paused, watching its bright window from across the street, with the delicate glassworks elegantly poised and its gold leaf inconspicuously winking at her. Inside she could see all of the perfectly fragile statues and displays, like a mini-porcelain palace. The next thing she knew, she was crossing the street and going through its heavy glass doors.

She was semi-aware that she did not belong there. For one: she was not looking for over-priced, vintage wedding china. Secondly: her feelings on china were still approximately the same from the last time she'd been in here. Regardless of all of that, she found herself wandering around, examining the collections inside of the glass cases. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the conversation they'd had in here, about his parents' wedding china. It seemed like years ago now. She could hardly remember what he'd said, but she kept walking around, looking closely, waiting to _get it_. Maybe it would hit her. Maybe she would see the right kind of china and she would understand what he'd been trying to tell her. That is – if he'd been trying to tell her anything at all.

"I thought you didn't care about plates."

She didn't have to turn around to know it was him. From the way the tiny hairs stood up on her neck to the way she felt her heart plummet to her stomach and then back again, it was hard to think of who else it could possibly have been.

"I don't," she said, swallowing hard. "But it doesn't hurt to double-check."

He stepped up beside her, and she silently took a deep breath. He was here. Out of nowhere, but what did that matter? He was here, like magic.

She slowly turned to him. "Let's go outside."

Outside, the streets were empty and damp. It had been raining on and off, and all the wetness around them reflected gold from the light of the window display. It was late enough that most of the shops had closed, with the remaining few just open for the hour. In the back of her mind, she panicked about whether she had waited too long – if he had moved on since then, or worse: if she'd just imagined everything. That was the problematic thing with whether something was "real" or not. People forgot that realness was subjective. What was real to her could very possibly mean nothing to him at all.

"From what I heard, you disappeared," he said. "So I assume you want all the sordid details about how Ginny and Potter reconciled, and how the world seems to have avoided internally combusting, yet again."

She scoffed. "No. I've moved on."

His eyes were steady on her and he was silent for a minute, as if scrutinizing her. "Is it working?"

"I'd say so. Slowly but surely." She paused. "What about you?"

He smirked a little, and some part of that relieved her. Everything was changing but at least that was familiar. She thought about it and she actually wanted to laugh. Who would have thought that, some day, she would find his stupid little smirk comforting? When had it changed from being an annoying reminder of his privileged lot in life to something that she suddenly wanted to cling onto – to something that meant that even though everything now seemed unrecognizable, that would always be the same?

When had that turned into such a good thing?

"Easy enough. Like you said, I didn't love her."

"I think," she said, watching his face carefully, "you loved her a little."

She knew better now, angst aside, that it was impossible to have emerged from that situation unscathed, for anyone. Even if he had, like he'd said, never loved her. Because she refused to believe that. Instead she believed that, once upon a time, he _had_ loved her. Even if it had been for the briefest of moments. Even if, in the end, he had lost it. Because the thing with losing something was that it had to have belonged to you first. And that always – _always_ – hurt.

He smiled her a microscopic smile. "Maybe."

She let him know that it didn't make any sense. His logic was too flawed to stand on its own. If he hadn't loved Ginny, even at least a little, then why did he stay for so long? He could've easily just cut himself out of the picture and promptly moved on, away, mess-free.

"Maybe," he said, "I thought there was something worth sticking around for. Maybe all I needed was a little patience."

This. It was this moment that could have teetered between good and devastating. But as she looked up at him, with the golden light of the window faintly reflecting off of his hair, she just knew, somehow, that maybe she had worried about realness for nothing. If it hadn't been real, he would have walked right past the shop. But he hadn't. He had gone in, and now he was out here, with her. Some things you just couldn't dispute. Some things just felt like fate.

"And how," she asked, carefully choosing her words, "is that going for you?"

"You know," he said, staying very still and close to her, "really good, suddenly. Really good."

She had watched enough movies and read enough books to know that that sounded like an opportune moment for a kiss.

So she, like all other heroines before her, went for it.

* * *

Best friends always notice when things have changed for you. At least – the best kind of best friends. The really attentive kind.

That was why the following morning Elena immediately paused her conversation with Tod and followed her into the coffee room. Hermione poured some coffee into her mug.

"Either everything worked out or you just had the best sex of your life."

She tried not to smile at her. She was basking in the afterglow, and she didn't want to be smug about it. "Both."

Elena shook her head. "You lucky bitch."

Later on, she would relay this conversation to Malfoy, when they met up at his flat for the night. He listened on, amused. "And what did you say?"

"I didn't," she said. "I didn't say anything. Because it's kind of true, isn't it?"

"Maybe the bitch part," he said, and she rolled her eyes. "But you were never lucky, Granger. From what I've seen, you actually repel luck. You are the unluckiest person I know. But you are incredibly hard-working. And that matters more than luck."

She stared at him for a second. And then she laughed, shaking her head.

"What?"

"This," she said. "Just this. You and me. It better work. I mean, it just seems too crazy to."

"That," he said, "is exactly why it will."


End file.
